Assessing a Research Study

HLT-540

United States of America seems to be troubled by an issue of nurse shortage in current times. Lot of researches and consultations have been done in this aspect and several educationally valued scholars and researchers have come up with their own viewpoints of the reasons behind this issue and what can be done to improve it. This paper is one such work to study this issue and also that why there has been drop in the count of students opting for nursing as a profession.

One of the major reasons that was uncovered during their research on this issue of nurse shortage was that the number of students who were subscribing to the nurse study were declining sharply. That was responsible for less number of professionals in the field of medical care. Now upon further looking into the issue it was not just one but several more factors for declining interest in this field. One such factor was the common perception of nursing as a female oriented job, one which is basically structured for female workers and not so much for the guys. Other than that major factors included potential income, work independence, job security, social status, and work prestige and job security. Considering these factors prevents students from opting for this career for their life or any other of the same sort such as high school physical trainer, therapist or general physician. An experiment was conducted with the aid of group of enthusiastic participants to study into these factors in detail and how the perception of the students are for each of the three fields in terms of it. All the three work fields under Medicare category were ranked based on these factors and based on the characteristics of job predictably physicians were ranked top followed by nursing, physical therapist and educators and teachers at the end. Other than that, physicians and therapist were ranked ahead of high school teachers and nurses in respect of job independence factor. Nurses and teachers are considered to provide much less job creativity than therapist and physicians. The other factor responsible for affecting nursing as a career choice was being injury or disease prone. Working in medical field and especially in patients care can make anyone prone to diseases and that is why physical therapist who are in regular touch with patients were adjudged to be most prone to getting effected, followed by nurses and physicians in middle and school physical education teachers at the last spot. When it came to working flexible hours teachers were adjudged as last in that category and physical therapist, nurses and physicians as the most flexible workers. All these factors relating to job independence, injury risk, job characteristics were eventually suggesting one thing in the end and that was this job was more suited for women employees than men. But other than that it was also assessed that when it came to high school teacher, therapist or physicians women were the preferred sex. Men were also considered for these jobs but the females did far better than guys in this field. Now, nursing as a career option did fairly well on some grounds such as job security, good income, doing life changing work and nature of work to do. It was assessed that all these nurses enjoyed better position than therapist, physicians and teachers when it came to these areas but when it came to job prestige and social status nurses had a disappointing result. While conducting these researches about these four careers, nursing was judged to be second favourite after physicians. Much less job independence than physicians was one big difference among these two professions. Though much can’t be done about independence issue but prestige with work can be added to make it a respectable job to attract students to it. Nurses need to be given a respectable position in society and that can be made possible by inter-promotional events and programs to educate everyone with the working of a nurse and how much respectable it is to work as a nurse. This can be a useful way to not only spread awareness about nursing and help in popularising it but will also be useful in bringing some honour to the job too.

Wikes, Cowin and Johnson have made a deep study and research into this issue and come up with viewpoints of participants about considering nursing as career option, at Seago et al. (2014). Some were of the viewpoint that job security was an issue with the job and that cannot be overlooked. Other than that some had a say that nursing was a job that was not only popular and fun to work on but also was easy to find in some places. Other than that in Seago et al it was considered that nursing is a job which was less respected than it should probably be. Researches of Wilkes, Cowin and Johnson also suggested that some participants were of the view that. Working as a nurse was more than just a regular job, it was more of an entry making job. Like kind of a stepping stone to gain entry into the professional world. Now if we were to focus on positives out of this job, we can say that working as a nurse also gives an opportunity to get to know people from different walks of life. Therefore a sense of satisfaction is there as we get to like what we do and other than that we get to be more social and therefore more open to conditions. Not only nurses get to know each other but they also get to take good medical care of them and make a difference with their work. More than just job, it also gives a chance to change someone’s life forever and make a positive huge impact on it. This is what makes an interesting career option for students as there aren’t much of jobs with that kind of opportunities. Now to focus on promoting the teaching profession from high school level, there is a need to arrange some meetings between institutes offering these courses and high schools so that there can be sessions in schools to inform the students about advantages of this career option and how it can be used to make a difference to the society. Counselling sessions from experts can be a huge profitable decisions coming out of these link ups between nursing institutions and high schools, to inform and guide students to take up this career path and make a difference.

So to conclude this paper relating to the studies of both the researches that are ‘the nursing shortage: is it really about image’ and one other reliable article we come to a conclusions that both these piece of researches about the nursing problem in USA talk about one and the same thing only. They suggest that this profession is an honourable one though it is not treated with respect that it should and there needs to be fast change in that scenario and perception if there has to be change in the current scenario of nurses shortage in United States of America.

References

Seago, J. A., Spetz, J., Alvarado, A., Keane, D., & al, e. (2006). The nursing shortage: Is it really about image? Journal of Healthcare Management, 51(2), 96-108; discussion 109-10.

Wilkes, L.M., Cowin, L., & Johnson, M. (2014). The reasons students choose to undertake a nursing degree. Collegian, 22 (3), pp.259 – 265