Career Opportunities For Newly Qualified Nurse: Challenges And Solutions

Stressing factors in the change transition

Discuss about the Career Opportunities Available for Newly Qualified Nurse.

There are many job opportunities for the newly qualified nurses such as working in the hospitals as a registered nurse, working in the institutions such as colleges as staff nurses among others. However, most nurses after their professional studies face many challenges, and most of them believe that the transition is stressing. It is because the other health professionals have high expectations of the graduate nurses such as they will produce the highest quality of work as well as come out working fast. However, the opposite happens since these graduate nurses need direction from the old people in the professional because they lack knowledge on the role adjustment. Therefore, there is a need for the health professionals to put this mind and help them during the transition. In this paper, I will deeply discuss the development by reviewing some of the journals on their transition. My literature review will be on the stress as well as the shortage of nurses in the hospitals in over 57 countries.  It is important to look at this issue since the health services are continuing to deteriorate bringing adverse effects among the citizens.  The problem on the shortage of nurse is an international disaster hence the stalk holders all over the globe should find ways to correct it.  Though there are attempts to increase the recruitment of nurses, most of the newly registered nurses are resigning.

Fox argues in his journal that the work stress in most of the health facilities is making the nurses who have just graduated think of quitting the job. Most of the health centres have about 10 % of graduate nurses. Through the various studies, they noted that most of the nurses encounter many challenges during their transition from a student nurse to a registered nurse. In the journal on Nursing Today, the author argues that the problem on the resignation of the graduate is because of the stressing work environment. He keenly examined it because the loss of these new registered nurses may have a financial impact on the nation as well as affect the patients. Some of the factors that cause stress to the newly registered nurse are such as the program type, work unit, orientation as well as the duration in the work group. Some research was done to show what the newly registered nurses attributed most of their stress. Through the studies, they noted that most stressors were issues on the equipment in the health facilities. (Wu, Fox, Stokes, & Adam, 2012).

The shortage of Nurses

Another stressing factor that the newly qualified nurse goes through is the role adjustment factor. Most of the health professionals old in the job have high expectations of the newly registered nurses. They expect that these nurses will hit the ground running. Philip who looks at the Australian system of employment of the newly registered nurses claims that the post registration of the graduate nurses brought a lot of success than the pre-registration of the nurses. The author also adds that the nurses should be welcomed warmly in the work environment as well as given a proper guidance by the senior professionals in the job. He says that even if the graduate nurses undergo a lot of stress during their transition getting support from the other medical practitioners in the health facilities may improve their development.  If the graduate nurses go through a smooth transition, they will offer high-quality services. The seamless transition will also help in reducing the current pressure on recruiting as well as retaining of graduate nurses in Australia. It is because it will reduce the resignation rates of the graduate nurses. (Phillips, Kenny, Ester man, & Smith, 2014).

Patricia Suresh also wrote an article on stress among the fourth year students as well as newly registered nurses. Patricia primary goal was to know the extent of stress among the newly registered nurses in the health faculty.  The clinical nurse specialist also engaged a variety of people and explored their suggestions on stress as well as stressors.

In her journal, she says that stress in the workplace has adverse effects on the patients, the health facility as well as the stressed nurse. Stress affects the patients’ health as it deteriorates since when the nurse has stress, he or she will not give quality services. It also affects the medical practitioner psychologically as well as the patient. She also says stress between the graduate as well as newly registered nurse causes professional practice impairment.

Patricia carried out qualitative analysis among the registered nurses as well as the graduate nurses by use of an open-ended question. She did this to know the extent of stress among the new nurses. Her results show that there were high levels of stress in the two groups. They claimed that one of the causes of stress is a tremendous amount of workload per nurse. The significant amount of work was due to the small numbers of nurses in many countries hence the new nurses got fatigued leading to stress.  Another cause of stress was the merging of clinical employment and academics hence they had no relaxing time. Another reason that they suggested is harsh working conditions as well as clinical learning necessities that the government did not meet.

Therefore, there is a need for the hospital administrators to look for ways to reduce the workload among the nurses as well as mending the working conditions. By doing this, the stakeholders will have reduced stress among the graduate as well as new nurses easing the shift and reducing resignation cases. (Suresh, Matthews & Coyne, 2013)

The lack of nurses has become an issue of concern among many countries as the health care system is going on deteriorating.  In the authors work, he writes about the cause of this because there has been an on-going challenge of the retention as well as recruitment of the nurses. Several studies show that in a variety of the medical facilities the working environments, as well as the need of high commitment in the new graduate nurses, were the most common reasons for the shortage. Zhang Says in his paper that the lack of a robust model having moderators has led to the absence of interventions on how the nurses will remain in the workplace.( Lu,  Barriball, Zhang & While, 2012)

Gutierrez and Carver wrote one of the journals after examining the nurse’s commitment, the support given to them as well as the job satisfaction. During their studies, they found out that there is a significant shortage of nurses in over 50 countries. (Gutierrez, Candela & Carver, 2012).Therefore the lack of the health professionals in this faculty has become a global disaster. Steps were taken to retain as well as recruit a large number of citizens to reduce the vast deficiency of the health professions in the health facilities.  Carver and Gutierrez say that there is a need for making the health professionals understands the need of commitment for their retention. After their studies, they noted that the use of mentoring skills as well as good relationships among the employees in the health facilities led to increase in the commitment. It has also resulted in job satisfaction among the graduate nurses. By mentoring the graduate nurses, they appreciate their job as well as the good relationship between one another. Another author that supports Gutierrez on the need for mentoring is Omansky. (Chen & Lou, 2014).

Bredah happel talks about how to reduce the stress factors among the nurses, which include large amounts of work, inadequate personnel and interpersonal matters among others. One of the proposals she suggests is the adjustment of the workload to reduce stress among the new nurses. They can do these by giving right jobs to the new personnel and increasing the workload as the nurses get acquainted in the job. These will reduce the many cases on the resignation. Another problem that causes stress among the newly registered nurses is the shift work.  She recommends for changes in shifting hours so that the new healthy professional’s will not function at a particular time only. The change of shift hours makes everyone to work at different times hence there will be no complaints of some of the nurses doing more work than others do. The problem of the health care environments can be addressed by knowing the stressors in the faculty and involving the nurses in coming up with the initiatives to use in reducing stress. (Happell et al., 2013)

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is true to say that changing the life of a student to the workplace comes in with its challenges. This transition experienced in the health faculty is bringing in a lot of problems such as deterioration of health among the patients due to low-quality services, psychological issues among the health professionals as well as the patients.  The newly registered health professionals feel overloaded as they undergo since they were not used to the high amounts of work resulting in stress. Despite the large sums of work they also get stressed up because of poor working conditions, equipment, and a weak relationship among the workers as well as the high expectations of the other medical professionals. However, the stakeholders should try to address these issues for instance by increasing the health personnel. In some countries the medical equipment’s are of low standards hence the doctors get stressed upon the method to use in treating the diseases.  The stakeholders in all the countries should embrace some of the recommendations above since good heath is the most necessary thing for every citizen.

References

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