Nurse Shortage

Fact : Newfoundland and Labrador - Over 1000 nurses short

Q: What is the nursing shortage and why does it exist?

A: In the most basic sense, the current global nursing shortage is simply a widespread and dangerous lack of skilled nurses who are needed to care for individual patients and the population as a whole. The work of the world's estimated 12 million nurses is not well understood, even by educated members of society. But nursing is a distinct scientific field and autonomous profession whose skilled practitioners save lives and improve patient outcomes every day in a wide variety of settings. In the Center's view, the vast gap between what skilled nurses really do and what the public thinks they do is a fundamental factor underlying most of the more immediate apparent causes of the shortage. These causes include nurse short-staffing, poor work conditions, inadequate resources for nursing research and education, the aging nursing workforce, expanded career options for women, nursing's predominantly female nature, the increasing complexity of health care and care technology, and the rapidly aging populations in developed nations. Because studies have shown that an inadequate quantity of skilled nurses in clinical settings has a significant negative impact on patient outcomes, including mortality, the nursing shortage is literally taking lives, and impairing the health and wellbeing of many millions of the world's people. It is a global public health crisis.