Time to solve persistent, pernicious and widespread nursing workforce shortages

This paper discusses four main strategies for addressing nursing shortages that have been persistent, widespread and growing. Fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic might offer valuable impetus to address this tenacious challenge.

Nursing shortages are common, widespread and have been persistent for most of a century. Many of the reasons behind these shortages are well known and are themselves enduring, as are the types of strategies put forward for addressing them. These strategies can generally be classified into four main categories: enhancing retention, improving recruitment, encouraging return to practice and drawing on international human resources. The COVID-19 pandemic is the latest major threat to ensuring a sufficiently sized and skilled nursing workforce. Many nurses have succumbed to burnout as well the plethora of factors that predated the pandemic and have a negative impact on nurse wellbeing, turnover and intention to leave.

This discussion paper draws on international sources of evidence.

This paper highlights how many of the factors behind and strategies for addressing nursing shortages at the local, national and global levels are widely studied and known. A sustained combination of strategies that focus both within and beyond health and nursing, including on the broader social context, is necessary. While COVID-19 has been extremely damaging, it might present an opportunity to make sustainable, effective reforms to address nursing shortages.

Knowledge users must recognise that a combination of approaches across the gamut of policies that influence nursing workforces is necessary to address nursing shortages. Attention must also focus on factors beyond nursing and healthcare if shortages are to be remedied.