Common Nursing Problems in New Zealand
Nursing as a professional area of concern has many issues and problems that have been affected the department for many years though some of these issues are contemporary. Nursing professionals remains an important medical profession not only within the country but also globally. Nursing professionals holds a key role especially in caring for patients makes it one of the core element of medical health. There are many different studies that have been conducted in order to establish various issues that affect nursing professionals. These issues or problems have resulted in the development of policies while some issues have never been resolved. Some of the problems that have been affecting nurses within New Zealand have resulted in numerous strikes and work boycott that is seen in the recent past. In a bid to tackle nurse issues, the minister of health has form many task forces and have recommended some policies changes. An example of the policy document that resulted in the task force appointed by the Minister of Health was the Nursing Role of New Zealand. Some of the most common nursing problems or issues include workforce supply, workplace hazards, workplace violence, compensation, meeting patient expectations, long working hours, personal health, Poor work-life balance, and nursing education pathway. The following paper explores various nursing problems and issue that necessitate the need for policy.
Nursing as professional area of concern faces many problems or issues that have resulted in the development of policies within New Zealand. Despite the important position of the nursing practice within the health system, a number of challenges highly affects the nursing profession. Some of these challenges have been resolved while others still persist until today and are the leading cause of nurses strikes witnessed in country in the past few weeks. The overall result of these challenges is the development of a nursing policy that reduces some of the challenges. Some of the discussed problems are workforce supply, workplace hazards, workplace violence, compensation, meeting patient expectations, long working hours, personal health, Poor work-life balance, and nursing education pathway.
Work dissatisfaction is an issue that is facing nursing professional with many nurses indicating that their job does not match their expectations. As cited by Chhugani and James (2017), many nursing practitioners are struggling with emotional challenge especially accepting their professional carrier payment. Different studies has proven the issue of emotional challenge and identified that nursing practitioners more so those nurses that are of 30 years and below are finding it difficult to accept current payment and work environment. In addition, a study by Baraz-Pordanjani, Memarian, and Vanaki (2014) shows that more than 40% of nursing professionals within New Zealand has lost confidence in their profession due to harassment and bullying in the course of practice. This is also true with the cases of unsafe care that nurses offer due to emotional stress leading to dissatisfaction by clients. To make it worst, many nurses has changed their career over the past 12 months due to workplace problems leading to dissatisfaction. Another research by Tsuruwaka (2015) also shows a survey conducted within New Zealand among nurses that indicate workplace dissatisfaction is the main reason that makes some nurses travel overseas looking for jobs. Several studies have suggested that there is a need for a mechanism to encourage nursing practitioners and reduce the job dissatisfaction that has been experiencing.
The Issue of Workforce Supply
Workforce supply is another problem or issue that has affected the nursing practitioners in the country over the past years. Firstly, there is a high demand for the nursing workforce as compared to the current workforce available within the country and this has resulted in huge demand. Increasing specialized care such as aged care and community health care is putting pressure on the available nursing professional within the country and point to future increase (Mari, 2017). Secondly, the workload that nurses are exposed is making the nursing profession difficult and unattractive. The number of them, when compared to the number of nurses, point to a worrying figure and this has resulted in the high nursing workload. Thirdly, the aging of many nursing professionals is high when compared to the current supply indicating the possibility of future workforce shortage. The population characteristic of the New Zealanders shows that the population is aging at a faster rate and this also true with the nursing professionals that is also losing many aged professional. This could result in a shortage in the future within the country and regionally. The nursing low workforce issues have been reported for many years this has necessitated the need for policy that will consider staffing to ensure that the low workforce is not experiencing in the future (Ramos, Brehmer, Vargas, Trombetta, Silveira and Drago, 2015).
Remuneration is another issue that highly affects nurses not only within New Zealand but globally. Nursing compensation has been argued as not comparable to the workload that nurses are exposed to in health care facilities. According to Lisa (2015), nurses within the Pacific region are generally paid the low salary of average $ 18000 annually and this is high when compared to another nurse from other regions such as Mid-Atlantic region where nurses are paid $ 14800. In addition, these payment disparities have made many nursing practitioners to seek employment in other regions outside the country hence reducing the nursing population within the country. The compensation is also tied to the emotional and job dissatisfaction that is normally linked to low confidence among nurses. Cannaerts, Gastmans and De Casterle (2014) indicate that the pay does not consider the number of hours that nurses take caring for patients and this has resulted in poor living standards of nursing professionals. Many nursing practitioners have cited their expectation is totally different from what they are going through as professionals and this is worsening in some health care facilities where work conditions are poor. Many nurses, therefore, have suggested a new way of compensation that will ensure better pay. This prompted the need for the development of some compensation mechanisms to better the need for nurses. Progressive payment is one way that nurses have suggested for ensuring that nurses are paid in a better way (Rogers & Wattis, 2015).
Compensation Challenges
Long working hours is another area of concern as nurse work for many hours before shift and the condition depend on the facility where nurse is on duty. Sometimes nurses are forced to work for many hours due to the care they are providing to patients. There are often cases of fatigue resulting from extended shifts or nurses working back to back and this may bring medical mistakes from nurses. According to a study conducted by Hakojärvi, Salminen, and Suhonen (2014), longer working hours that nurses are subjected to result in burnout and patient dissatisfaction and are experienced by many healthcare facilities within the country and globally. Another survey conducted the Nursing Council of New Zealand (2014), also shows 80% of nurses in America are experiencing similar longer working hours as compared to those within New Zealand. Moreover, the on average most nurses work for more than 13 hours shift leading to the patient’s dissatisfaction. This is completely making many nursing professionals to experience emotional challenges leading to the option of leaving a job for another profession. Negative cognitive and regret characterizes the life of most of the nurses that have experienced longer shifts in the course of the profession. Conclusively, many nurses are feeling that longer working hours is due to a low nursing workforce that is currently experienced in New Zealand. The overall result of nursing long working hours was that many nurses are leaving the career for other jobs and there is a need for the development of regulations that will be beneficial to all workforces (Yousefy, Yazdannik & Mohammadi, 2015).
There are many different workplace hazards that are affecting nursing professionals in the course of their duty. Firstly, many nurses are reportedly exposed to blood borne pathogens that put their lives at risk of getting ill. According to Salminen, Stolt, Metsämäki, Rinne, Kasen, and Leino-Kilpi (2016), more than 5.6 million health workers are exposed to the risk of pathogens that are dangerous to their life. Secondly, nurses sometimes experience injuries that result from equipment or machines that are sued within the hospital to treat patients. Thirdly, many hospitals and health facilities have a huge number of germs that nurses are either directly or indirectly exposed and this put their life at risk. This makes many workers that are working within this hospital to risk their lives. In addition, the nursing practitioners are always working in many different departments and this has made them risk contacting diseases from many patients (Ganesh, Fiona, Wilma and Hugh, 2014).
Long Working Hours
Studies indicate that there is a need to reduce the risk that nurses are exposed as this can result in injuries, illness and event mortality among these nursing professionals. According to Mari (2017), there is a need to come up with risk mitigating factors especially a policy that will ensure that nurses are not at risk in the course of duty. In addition, there is a need to train nurses on ways to protect themselves from risk associated factors when in practice. This necessitates the need for a policy document that outlines the procedures that are carried out to prevent the risk that nurses are exposed.
Workplace violence is another issue that is affecting the nursing profession in New Zealand. The origin of the violence nursing professionals experience is mainly from co-workers and patients. Patients reportedly harass nurses who turn out to be violent and this has highly contributed to injuries and other work-related complications. Moreover, many nurses are exposed to abuse from patients who sometimes have a mental related illness that makes them violence (Hutchinson, Shedlin, Gallo, Krainovich-Miller and Fulmer, 2014). In addition, co-workers are also a source of violence that is also reported according to the data from occupational health hazards. Over the past few years, the number of cases that are due to violence from abuses has increased. Workplace violence that nurses experience is normally seen as a key factor that makes nurse have a negative attitude from collaborative duty especially when the violence results from co-workers. Research by Arslan and Dinc (2016) shows the need to come up with a strategy to reduce or control violence and one of the suggested areas that can help the nursing practitioners is the development of policy to reduce this violence. Furthermore, the development of a policy point to the possibility of doing away with the issue of violence for many years to come.
Meeting the patient’s expectation is an issue that is reported affects many nurses since patients have high expectations that may not be met. According to Beaver (2015), nurses see meeting the patient’s expectation as an important area of concern due to challenges that nurses face making it difficult to meet these challenges. For instance, one of the reasons that have been advanced for not meeting patient’s expectation is based on the short staffing making nurse to be overworked. This has resulted in poor quality of care offered by these nurses and the condition is worst in some health care facilities where the number of caregivers is even smaller than the standard. In addition, the dissatisfaction of patients reduces the morale of the nurse and increase the stress leading to poor quality of service. Patients in many health facilities have reported poor quality of services resulting from a low number of nurses attending to these patients. There is a need for the development of control measures that will ensure that the nurse population correspond to the patient number as this will ensure that patients receive the service worth their expectation. One of the ways to meet patient expectation is to develop policies that will ensure certain care are offered to patients (Jamieson, 2012).
Workplace Hazards and Violence
Personal health has been cited as one of major causes of low morale among nursing practitioners. It is worth noting that nursing practice is a risky and health hazard career that may result in poor personal health. This is even worst in cases where nurses are experiencing workplace challenges and the overall result is the poor quality of service that is a medical risk (Chhugani & James 2017). The stress these practitioners are exposed to leads to emotional problems such as depression. Increase stress is related to health complications that have been experienced in many health care facilities across New Zealand. For instance, those nurses working within the Maori people have been experiencing low career morale due to the work condition that they are exposed. Moreover, the female gender has been exposed to more risk emanating from workplace violence from male counterpart or patients. Discrimination is even getting worst with some nurses reportedly abused or injured in the course of duty. Another source of personal stress and health is long working hours or shifts that make nurses work through feeling tired and burnout. This has complicated the health leading to more health-related issues. The stress and personal health issues make it needful to have some policies that can determine the number of hours that nurses should work and other stress-related causes for ensuring that there is an improvement in nurse personal health (Beaver, 2015).
Poor duty-life balance is a nurse issue that is based on other challenges that have already affecting nurses. Firstly, long working hours and shifts leave little for nursing practitioners to take time and relax with their families. Secondly, any numbers of commitments within the nurse profession make it difficult to balance between their personal life and work. Thirdly, emotional and stress that nurses are subjected is the reason many nurses can’t take care of personal issues that they face. Low remuneration and individual’s need have also made it difficult to balance between personal life and duty leading to more challenges than solutions. A survey by Sinclair, Papps, and Marshall (2016) indicates that many nurses have reported that they do not know how to balance their personal issues and work due to long commitments. Studies further suggest the need to help the nurse plan for their personal issues and necessitate the need for personal development training on how to balance personal life and work. Moreover, the development of policy to train nurses on the need to balance work and life is important for future service quality improvement. This will also ensure that nurses are not exposed to challenges that may result in stress (World Health Organization, 2015).
Conclusion
Nursing learning path, especially in the educational path, remains a challenge within the nursing profession as many practitioners are unable to advance their education. According to Gooch (2015), many nurses argue that there are many factors that make it difficult to advance their training and education. Firstly, a tight working environment makes it difficult to pursue advanced education in New Zealand and this has increased over the past years. Secondly, as indicated by Nahid, Zahra, Farkhondeh, Camellia and Majid (2016), many nurses find it difficult to further their education to master’s degree level due to the low compensation they receive from employers. In addition, the insufficient salary has been shown to be not enough for family use making it difficult to do other developmental issues. Thirdly, the inability of nursing professionals to balance personal life and work has also contributed to low advance educational trainees within institutions. As identified by Jamieson (2012), nursing education path has been marked with challenges making many nurses to opt out of training before being registered as nurses. This is due to challenges that these nurses face in the course of duty and is also connected to nursing emotional stress leading to the loss of confidence.
In light of the challenges and issues that affect the nursing professionals, these challenges have led to the development of policies in the health care department of the country. An example of the policy that has resulted from these challenges is the Nursing Practitioners in New Zealand also known as Nurse Practitioner Role in New Zealand.
Considering various challenges that have affected the nursing professionals within the country has led to the development of one of the policies within the health sector of the country. The development of the policy followed the recommendation from taskforce that was appointed by the minister to investigate the nursing challenges in 1998 (Hughes & Carrier, 2002).
Some of the key principle that forms the core of this nursing policy clearly shows the issues that nurses have faced. Firstly, the population status of the nurse is a key principle that shows the low number or population of nursing practitioners as compared to a patient that is served. Secondly, the autonomous principle of the nursing practitioners is based on the need to reduce other disciplines supervising nurses. Thirdly, nursing as an advanced level of clinical practice is another principle that also shows the nursing practice as a core and an important level of clinical practice. Lastly, the principle of inequality reduction is a principle that shows the importance of nursing practitioners in reducing health inequalities. The policy document identifies some of the areas where the nurse is competent and should be treated as qualified practitioners. Firstly, managing patients with complex conditions and enabling patients to access services. Secondly, the provision of children care including immunization and screening. Thirdly, clinical management and monitoring of treatments in the course of care for patients (World Health Organization, 2015).
Despite many challenges affect nursing professionals, some of these challenges has been dealt with yet as professional nurses are not satisfied. For instance, the compensation issues have been dealt with in a number of those occasions and yet there are many different strikes. Moreover, the nursing professionals have repeatedly cited poor work environment yet there are many different policies that have been developed to tackle the issue of the environment. Another example of an issue that has been dealt with is workplace violence has significantly reduced to a minimum number. This implies that some more strategies have to be put in place to reduce nursing stress other than the condition at the workplace. Furthermore, there are some legal instruments that need to be developed to ensure that nursing practice is secured and with limited problems.
In conclusion, the nursing profession remains an important medical career though faced with a number of challenges. There are many challenges that are affecting nursing professional within New Zealand and internationally. These challenges require the development of policy to solve or to help nurse professionals in the course of their duty. There are research and studies that have explained the connection between these nursing challenges and the development of policy. In addition, some challenges have been affecting nurses for many years despite the effort to contain nursing challenges.
Reference
Arslan, S. & Dinc, L. (2016). Nursing students’ perceptions of faculty members’ ethical/unethical attitudes. Nursing Ethics, 27:1–13.
Baraz-Pordanjani, S. Memarian, R. & Vanaki, Z. (2014). Damaged professional identity as a barrier to Iranian nursing students’ clinical learning: a qualitative study. Journal of Clinical Nursing and Midwifery, 3(3): 1–15.
Beaver, P. (2015). Contemporary Patient Safety and the Challenges for New Zealand. The University of Auckland. Retrieved from https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm
Cannaerts, N., Gastmans, C. D. & De Casterle B. (2014). The contribution of ethics education to the ethical competence of nursing students: educators’ and students’ perceptions. Nursing Ethics. 21(8):861–78.
Chhugani, M., & James M.M. (2017). Challenges faced by nurses in India-the major workforce of the healthcare system. Nurse Care Open Acces Journal, 2(4):112?114. DOI: 10.15406/ncoaj.2017.02.00045
Ganesh, N., Fiona S., Wilma M. & Hugh D. (June 2014), New Zealand Nurses: Workforce Planning 2010-2035. Berl, Wellington. The Nursing Council of New Zealand. Retrieved from: https://www.nursingcouncil.org.nz/index.php/content/download/909/3537/file/The%20Future%20Nurisng%20Workforce%20supply%20projections%202010-2035.pdf
Gooch, K. (2015). 5 of the Biggest Issues Nurses Face Today. The Becker’s Hospital Review. Retrieved from https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/human-capital-and-risk/5-of-the-biggest-issues-nurses-face-today.html
Hakojärvi, H.R, Salminen, L., & Suhonen, R. (2014). Health care students’ personal experiences and coping with bullying in clinical training. Nurse Education Today. 34(1):138–44.
Hutchinson, M.K., Shedlin M.G., Gallo, B., Krainovich-Miller, B., & Fulmer, T. (2014). Ethics-in-the-round: a guided peer approach for addressing ethical issues confronting nursing students. Nursing Education Perspective, 35(1):58–60.
Jamieson, I. (2012). What are the views of Generation Y New Zealand Registered Nurses towards nursing, work, and career? A descriptive exploratory study. University of Canterbury: Christchurch.
Lisa, K. (Mar 07 2015). Nursing job-student ratio unhealthy. Retrieved from https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/67078917/null
Mari, T. (2017). Consulted ethical problems of clinical nursing practice: the perspective of faculty members in Japan. BMC NursingBMC series – open, inclusive and trusted, 16:23. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-017-0217-3
Nahid, J., Zahra, M. Farkhondeh S., Camellia T., & Majid N.K. (2016). The Challenges of Nursing Students in the Clinical Learning Environment: A Qualitative Study. The Scientific World Journal, 16(1): 7 pages. https://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/1846178
Nursing Council of New Zealand. (2014). The New Zealand Nursing Workforce: A Profile of Nurse Practitioners, Registered Nurses and Enrolled Nurses 2011. Nursing Council of New Zealand: Wellington.
Ramos F.R., Brehmer L.C., Vargas M.A., Trombetta A.P., Silveira L.R., Drago, L. (2015). Ethical conflicts and the process of reflection in undergraduate nursing students in Brazil. Nursing Education Perspective, 22(4):428–39.
Rogers, M. & Wattis, J. (2015). Spirituality in nursing practice. Nursing standard (Royal College of Nursing (Great Britain) DO – 10.7748/ns.29.39.51.e9726
Salminen, L, Stolt M, Metsämäki R, Rinne J, Kasen A, Leino-Kilpi H. (2016). Ethical principles in the work of nurse educator: A cross-sectional study. Nurse Education Today, 36:18–22.
Sinclair, J., Papps E., & Marshall, B. (2016). Nursing students’ experiences of ethical issues in clinical practice: A New Zealand study. Nursing Education Perspective, 17:1–7.
Tsuruwaka, M. (2015). Crucial ethical problem for Japanese nursing students in clinical settings. Journal of Nursing Education Perspective, 5(12):17–24.
World Health Organization. (2015). Health Professions Networks Nursing & Midwifery Human Resources for Health. A Global Survey Monitoring Progress in Nursing and Midwifery. World Health Organization: Geneva.
Yousefy, A., Yazdannik, R. & Mohammadi, S. (2015). Exploring the environment of clinical baccalaureate nursing students’ education in Iran; A qualitative descriptive study, Nurse Education Today, 35, (12):1295–1300.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
