Thank you, professor, for your feedback.
We believe that we will see meaningful solutions to the nursing shortages during our lifetime. Despite the complexity of the issue of nursing shortages, a number of solutions are currently being implemented with probable outcomes in the future. The current focus is on improving nursing supply through focused policies that support nursing education, nursing scope of practice, and nursing recruitment. We have seen increased calls towards improved investments in nursing education to increase the supply of qualified nursing professionals to meet the growing demand. As the reality of the nursing shortages has been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers in the United States and around the world have become more aware of the need to increase funding for nursing education and improve the working conditions for nursing professions, including better compensation to make the professions more attractive. An example is the calls for increased investments in Canada to improve the nursing workforce in the post-pandemic period in response to the nursing shortage realities experienced during the pandemic (Murphy et al., 2022).
Additionally, we are seeing policy changes and developments, especially here in the U.S., both at the state and federal levels, pushing for better recognition of qualified nurses based on their education level. Most U.S. states are making major policy changes to grant practice and prescriptive authority to nurses with advanced education. Improving the prescriptive and practice authority of advanced practice nurses is already proving to improve the supply of primary care healthcare practitioners in the U.S., with a significant impact on access to care (Yang et al., 2020). Most importantly, the U.S. is experiencing tremendous advancements in healthcare-targeted technologies such as telemedicine, allowing delivery of care remotely and the ability of nurses to deliver care to multiple clients without overburdening the nurses. We believe that with the current policy changes, investments in nursing education and recruitment, and tapping into the potentials of technologies such as telehealth, we will meaningfully resolve the nursing shortages in our lifetime.
References
Murphy, G. T., Sampalli, T., Bearskin, L. B., Cashen, N., Cummings, G., Rose, A. E., Etowa, J., Grinspun, D., Jones, E. W., Lavoie-Tremblay, M., MacMillan, K., MacQuarrie, C., Martin-Misener, R., Oulton, J., Ricciardelli, R., Silas, L., Thorne, S., Villeneuve, M., Embrett, M., … Hayden, Z. (2022). Investing in Canada’s nursing workforce post-pandemic: A call to action. Facets, 7. https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2022-0002
Yang, B. K., Johantgen, M. E., Trinkoff, A. M., Idzik, S. R., Wince, J., & Tomlinson, C. (2020). State Nurse Practitioner Practice Regulations and U.S. Health Care Delivery Outcomes: A Systematic Review. Medical Care Research and Review, 78(3), 183–196. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077558719901216