Nursing

Th is report focuses on the supply and employment of nursing graduates in Ontario and their absorption into the workforce over the two-year period from 2003/4 to 2004/5. It begins with a review of labour market trends in the health care sector and discusses nursing supply, mobility, and cross-border migration in the recent past. The major repositories of data on
nurse education are identified and an overview of the entry of new nurses into the workforce is provided. Based on a survey of new graduands, a profile of new nurses is presented.

This data creates a profile of the nursing workforce, which is useful for projecting trends and estimating future requirements. At the corporate level, longitudinal examination over a series of years would demonstrate the relationship between the characteristics of the nursing workforce and the overall requirements for patient care. At the unit level, the data is helpful to examine human resource needs and fluctuations in the workforce characteristics.

The three sources of nursing supply in Canada are new graduates, internationally educated nurses (IENs) and nurses returning to the workforce. This report focuses on IENs. Globalization has led to high rates of migration of professionals to economically vibrant countries such as Canada. Because many skilled and educated migrants do not always realize their full potential in their new country, policies to maximize brain gain are imperative. [from executive summary]

Understanding the supply and utilization of nurses is critical to maintaining an effective community health system. There has to be sufficient staff and a work environment that builds on the existing strengths of community health nursing to meet emerging needs. This report provides a demographic profile of community health nurses (CHNs) in Ontario and identifies enablers that support optimal practice of their competencies. [from executive summary]

Rural health care is changing. Following restructuring in the 1990s some small hospitals remained independent, while others reorganized as amalgamations and alliances. In 2004, Ontario was divided into 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) to create accessible, quality health care at a local level. Th is study was designed to gain an understanding of the impact on nursing work and the workforce. [from executive summary]

This issue of the Health Policy Research Bulletin examines research on the state of working conditions facing Canada’s nurses and discusses the implications for the larger health care system. [author’s description]

Infant feeding is a subject of worry in prevention of mother to child transmission (pMTCT) programmes in settings where breastfeeding is normative. Nurse-counsellors, expected to counsel HIV-positive women on safer infant feeding methods as defined in national/international guidelines, are faced with a number of challenges. This study aims to explore the experiences and situated concerns of nurses working as infant feeding counsellors to HIV-positive mothers enrolled in pMTCT programmes in the Kilimanjaro region, northern Tanzania. [abstract]

In order to help improve Royal College of Nursing understanding of the employment experiences of internationally recruited nurses and UK trained black and minority ethnic (BME) nurses, the RCN commissioned a secondary analysis to draw together commentary and analysis from previous surveys.

The RCN commissioned a survey of 6,000 members in 2000 to explore nurses’ wellbeing and working lives. The results subsequently helped shape RCN policy and materials for members on topics such as bullying and harassment, violence, needlestick injury and employee-friendly working practices. Five years later, the RCN has commissioned a second survey looking at a similar range of issues. This report documents the findings of that survey, and describes differences between the 2000 and 2005 survey findings. [introduction]

This best practice guideline focuses on nursing teams and processes that foster healthy work environments. The focus for the development of this guideline was collaborative practice among nursing teams with the view that this may be a first stage in a multi-staged process that could eventually result in interprofessional guidelines. A healthy work environment for nurses is a practice setting that maximizes the health and well being of nurses, quality patient outcomes and organizational performance. Effective nursing teamwork is essential to the work in health care organizations. [from purpose]

To objective of this article was to determine the prevalence and nature of workplace violence against nurses, how nurses deal with such aggression; and to identify the risk factors related to violence in the hospital environment. [author’s description]

There is growing concern globally at the current flows of nurse migration, particularly from low-income to middle and high-income countries. Recruitment practices of many countries such as Ireland are thought to be fuelling this rate of migration. This paper aims to establish the perceptions and opinions of those involved in the recruitment process on their role in recruitment and the effects recruitment has on both source and destination countries. [from abstract]

This report presents the child mortality impact of a trial of primary healthcare service delivery strategies in rural Ghana. After adjustment for sociodemographic factors, underfive mortality in areas with village-based community-nurse services fell by 16 percent during the five years of program implementation compared with mortality before the intervention. [from abstract]

This paper focuses on the scheme by the Malawi Ministry of Health (MOH) to retain nurse tutors in collaboration with the Christian Health Association of Malawi (CHAM). It chronicles the scheme’s successful elements for purposes of eventual replication, suggests how to address some of the challenges and identifies effective incentives, including salary supplements. [from executive summary]

TURP was commissioned to investigate the extent of nurse emigration and to suggest why this is happening. This report draws out the findings of the research conducted by TURP, and also uses information from newspaper reports. [introduction]

Population-based healthcare has become the focus of healthcare services around the world so there is an ever-increasing need to train and support nurse managers who can led and nurture nurses as they work towards providing optimum levels of satisfaction and safety in the care they give to their patients. [abstract]

The most pressing challenge to achieving universal access to highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) in sub-Saharan Africa is the shortage of trained personnel to handle the increased service requirements of rapid roll-out. Overcoming the human resource challenge requires developing innovative models of care provision that improve efficiency of service delivery and rationalize use of limited resources. We conducted a time-series intervention trial in two HIV clinics in central Mozambique to discern whether expanding the role of basic-level nurses to stage HIV-positive patients using CD4 counts and WHO-defined criteria would lead to more rapid information on patient status (including identification of HAART eligible patients), increased efficiency in the use of higher-level clinical staff, and increased capacity to start HAART-eligible patients on treatment.

A seven-point framework was used to analyze retention strategies in four countries: Uganda, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Thailand. This framework draws upon available country data and includes GDP and investment in health, mix of private/public investment, international migration, health policy frameworks, countrywide strategies, provincial/regional strategies, and professional associations/regulatory bodies. Comparison of the countries demonstrated that progress has been made in nurse retention. [from executive summary]

This report marks the culmination of the Nursing Sector Study. The five year study consisted of two phases, and examined the nursing workforce for all three regulated nursing professions in Canada. Phase I, which concluded in December 2004, examined the state of nursing human resources in Canada. The objective of Phase II was to develop a pan-Canadian nursing human resource (HR) strategy in consultation with government and non-government stakeholders that built on the findings and recommendations presented at the completion of Phase I. [from executive summary]

This commentary examines the significance of international links as a major contributor to growth of the nursing workforce in the UK, and also highlights more recent indicators of a rapid decline in international nurses registering in the UK. [from introduction]

The migration of health professionals trained in Africa to developed nations has compromised health systems in the African region. The financial losses from the investment in training due to the migration from the developing nations are hardly known. Developing countries are losing significant amounts of money through lost investment of health care professionals who emigrate. There is need to quantify the amount of remittances that developing nations get in return from those who migrate. [from abstract]

Rewards are important in attracting, motivating and retaining the most qualified employees, and nurses are no exception to this rule. This makes the establishment of an efficient reward system for nurses a true challenge for every hospital manager. A reward does not necessarily have a financial connotation: non-financial rewards may matter too, or may even be more important. Therefore, the present study examines nurses’ reward perceptions, in order to identify potential reward options. [abstract]

The NSW Department of Health is responsible for managing nurse supply. It needs to identify the extent and nature of shortages and develop ways to attract, retain and best manage nurses working in public hospitals. This audit looks at how nurses are managed in four of our public hospitals and examines how the Department has responded to expected nurse shortages. It also highlights actions that have helped reduce the number of nurses leaving hospitals. [from foreword]

This best practice guideline aims to identify and describe: leadership practices that result in healthy outcomes for nurses, patients/clients, organizations and systems; system resources that support effective leadership practices; organizational culture, values and resources that support effective leadership practices; personal resources that support effective leadership practices; and anticipated outcomes of effective nursing leadership. [author’s description]

This Royal College of Nursing (RCN) publication is designed to assist you in your role as a mentor to pre-registration nursing and midwifery students. It outlines your responsibilities alongside those of the student, higher education institutions (HEIs) and placement providers. [introduction]

This guidance sets out some of the key issues faced by IRNs, and suggests good practice for managers in overcoming these problems to create a new workforce whose wellbeing and professional status is at the forefront of recruitement policies. [from introduction]

This paper assesses the reasons for recent growth in recruitment of registered nurses from other countries to the United Kingdom (UK). It aims to examine trends in inward recruitment of nurses to the UK, assess the impact of free mobility of registered nurses in the European Union from a UK perspective, examine the impact of the introduction of ethical guidelines on international recruitment of nurses to the UK, and explore the reasons why registered nurses are internationally mobile. [from introduction]

This report is intended to generate discussion and direct future initiatives aimed at improving the current nationwide shortage of nurses. It is a review, analysis, and discussion of six major research documents on Canadian nursing human resource issues produced during the last five years. The questions this report sets out to answer are: What are the fundamental issues behind nursing human resource challenges? What solutions and strategies have been put forward to address them? What areas are being addressed? What areas have not been addressed and why? [from executive summary]

These yearly summary reports provide information on nurse wages and the comparitive buying power of these wages in Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. The data are results from a survey of 11 National Nurses’ Associations. [from introduction]

For employment contracts not covered by collective agreements, individual nurses must be able to negotiate salaries and conditions of employment commensurate with their position and job functions. The purpose of these guidelines is to assist nurses in applying for senior positions and includes a review of the position, the application processes in its broader context and a clarification of both individual and collective employment contracts and how these relate to senior positions. [from preface]