Ageing in the nursing workforce - a global challenge in an Irish context.

BACKGROUND: The 2008 financial crisis exacerbated an already mounting workforce challenge faced by most health services in the western world, namely the recruitment and retention of qualified nurses. AIM: This paper examines two additional challenges of relevance to workforce planning in health care, an ageing nursing workforce and reliance upon migrant nurses to solve short-term workforce issues. METHODS: Using Ireland as a case exemplar of these issues, this paper argues that policy makers and service providers should seek not only to address the challenge of retaining trained newly qualified and younger nurses but also focus on supporting older nurses and migrant nurses to remain within the workforce. FINDINGS: The findings of this paper highlight the need for workforce planners, policy makers and service providers to take account of an ageing nursing workforce and reliance on foreign-trained nurses as a solution to short-term planning difficulties. CONCLUSION: Failure to address this need is likely to lead to significant workforce difficulties for health services into the future and undermine current efforts to increase the number and long-term retention of qualified nursing staff. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING POLICY: Policy makers and service providers should focus on the retention of trained older nurses as an important element of workforce planning.

Strategies to future-proof and enhance the nursing workforce.

Emeritus Professor Alan Glasper, University of Southampton, discusses a new initiative by Health Education England to address staffing challenges facing the health service.

Retirements and succession of nursing faculty in 2016-2025.

BACKGROUND: Faculty retirement has been a growing concern for the nursing education community given the impact it may have on preparing the future nursing workforce. PURPOSE: To estimate faculty retirements in 2016-2015 and to assess the impact of retirements on the faculty workforce. METHOD: The Least-Squares Regression and the Cohort Component Methods were used to project retirements. DISCUSSION: The study projected that total retirements in 2016-2025 would equal one third of faculty in 2015. Retirees are likely to come from current faculty aged 60 or older, and faculty aged 50-59 are likely to be their replacements. The impact of the retiring faculty on the faculty workforce will be huge given their overrepresentation in doctoral attainment, senior rank, and ability for graduate-level teaching. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest a sense of urgency for the nursing education community to address the impending exodus of senior faculty and to develop younger faculty for their successful succession.

Turn-over rate of academic faculty at the College of Health Sciences, Addis Ababa University: a 20-year analysis (1991 to 2011).

BACKGROUND: Faculty turn-over affects both workers and organizations. Turnover of faculty and researchers is increasing alarmingly and costing the universities and the country at large. Fast turnover of health professionals from the health system and from academic institutions has recently received substantial attention from both academia and health sector managers. This paper calculates the faculty turnover rate at the College of Health Sciences of Addis Ababa University during the period of September 1991 to August 2011. METHODS: The study was conducted at the College of Health Sciences, Addis Ababa University. Retrospective analysis of employee records was done. All records of the faculty that were working in the College during the 20-year period, starting from September 1991 to August 2011 were retrospectively reviewed. Data were collected from the employee records accessed from the College's human resources database and supplemented by payroll sheets and different reports. A structured checklist was used to extract the required data from the database. The crude turnover rate for academic faculty was calculated. RESULTS: Within the 20-year period of September 1991 to August 2011, a total of 120 faculty members left. The overall turn-over rate was 92.8 %. The rate in the most recent five years (172 %) is 8.5 times higher than the rate for the first five years (20 %). The average retention period before the termination of an employment contract was 4.9 years. The top five departments where employment contracts were relatively higher include: Nursing 15 (15.6 %), Internal Medicine 12 (12.5%), Public Health 10 (10.4%), Pediatrics 9 (9.4%) and Surgery 9 (9.4%). About two thirds (66.6%) of the faculty who were leaving were at the ranks of assistant professorship and above. CONCLUSION: This study revealed that outflow of faculty has been continuously increasing in the period reviewed. This implies that the College had been losing highly skilled professionals with considerably higher costs in monetary terms. In this regard, an urgent response is required to retain or significantly decrease the outflow of faculty. Different motivation and retention mechanisms should be identified and implemented. Various modalities of faculty development programs should also be initiated.

[Demography and labor shortage. Future challenges of labor market policy]. / Demografie und Fachkräftemangel. Die künftigen arbeitsmarktpolitischen Herausforderungen.

For demographic reasons, the German labor force will decrease dramatically and it will be much older on average. However, labor demand, especially for qualified workers, is expected to remain high. This paper focuses on the possibilities of expanding the labor force by increasing the participation rates of women and older persons. Herein, the change in the labor force is decomposed with respect to population and labor participation and, moreover, the effects of higher participation rates are simulated. The decomposition and simulation scenarios are based on data published by the Institute for Employment Research. The analysis clearly reveals that the effect of a considerably higher labor participation of women and older workers will disappear over time when the working-age population shrinks more and more. In addition, individuals who are currently unemployed or out of the labor force are not skilled enough. Since it seems difficult to get more qualified workers in the short and even in the medium term, improving the conditions for women and older people to take up jobs should be tackled soon. This includes investments in education and health care.

Nurse migration in an increasingly interconnected world: the case for internationalization of regulation of nurses and nursing regulatory bodies.

Psychiatric/Mental Health nursing has a long history of professional self-regulation; nevertheless, interest in how governments protect consumers of health care from poor or dangerous practice(s) is on the increase. Correspondingly, there have been calls, in several parts of the world, for greater watchfulness and due diligence from regulatory bodies. Mindful of the concept of "globalization" and the unequivocal data regarding the significant increase in the migration of nurses, it is difficult to ignore/deny the reality of an increasingly mobile and connected international nursing workforce. However, the extant literature also indicates the existence of significant disparities between countries and even states/provinces within countries as to the enforcement of professional regulation. What this means is that decisions made by one regulatory body can have a direct impact on the standard(s) of nursing quality and practice in a country on the opposite side of the world. As a result, the authors attempt to advance the debate that there is a clear need to reconcile these positions, and they introduce the argument for the creation of an international oversight body. Using case study material, the relevant theoretical and policy literature in this area (such as it is), and by drawing on examples of analogous oversight bodies from other areas, we draw attention to the need to create a genuinely international body for the oversight of nurse regulation.

The Health Care Job Engine: Where Do They Come From and What Do They Say About Our Future?

Health care has been cited as a job engine for the U.S. economy. This study used the Current Population Survey to examine the sector and occupation shifts that underlie this growth trend. Health care has had a cyclical relationship with retail trade, leisure and hospitality, education, and professional services. The entering workforce has been increasingly taking on low-skilled occupations. The exiting workforce has not been necessarily retiring or going back to school, but appeared to be leaving without a job, with potentially more child care duties, and with high rates of disability and poverty levels. This study also found that the number of workers staying in health care has been slowly declining over time. As the United States moves toward team-based care, more attention should be paid to the needs of the lower skilled workers to reduce turnover and ensure delivery of quality care.

[Critical challenges for human resources in health: a regional view]. / Desafios críticos dos recursos humanos em saúde: uma visão regional.

This text presents the context and background, the methodology and some of the main results of the regional consultation on the critical challenges for human resources in health in the Americas. The Consultation, carried out in June and July 2005, was part of the strategy of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) for the organization of the VII Regional Meeting of the Observatories of Human Resources, held in Toronto (Canada). The main results and suggestions by the actors consulted with regard to the role of international cooperation in the countries of the Region are presented, so that the countries and international agencies can better formulate common strategies of development and strengthening of the work force in health.

Inter-Provincial Migration Intentions of Family Physicians in Canada: The Roles of Income and Community Characteristics.

The inter-provincial migration patterns of family physicians in canada show that some provinces like newfoundland and saskatchewan experience persistent net out-migration, while others, including ontario and british columbia, are destinations more often than origins of migrants. Governments in provinces exhibiting net out-migration have responded with a number of incentive and recruitment programs. In this study, we investigate the determinants of the stated interprovincial migration intentions of 3,995 rural and urban family physicians in the 2010 wave of the national physician survey. We consider a range of physician characteristics, community attributes and working conditions. We find that in the intention to move, higher compensation has a modest effect, while the community characteristics have a consistently important influence. Our results suggest that policy and program designers should acknowledge the critical role of community-level living and working conditions in their family physician recruitment and retention efforts.

Turnover of deans of medicine during the last five decades.

This report uses published information on the tenures of the 862 U.S. medical school deans who served from 1940-41 through 1990-91 to ascertain whether the turnover of deans has increased historically. The data confirm the wide-spread impression that there has been increasing instability of medical school leadership in recent decades. The proportion of deans who survive to a specific tenure in office has diminished, and the proportion of schools with new deans has increased, although with marked yearly fluctuations. Furthermore, the frequency of deans' turnover has not been evenly distributed among medical schools. Some schools have had large numbers of short-tenured deans, while other schools have had only a few deans over the five decades studied. The authors speculate that the rise in the turnover of deans may be related to the criteria used for their selection and/or because American academic medical centers have grown in size and are increasing in organizational complexity. The authors urge that future research that explores the causes of recent deans' turnover should incorporate modern management and statistical techniques and consider organizational variables as well as the personal and professional characteristics of deans.

Características de la rotación en Atención Primaria de los residentes de Pediatría / Characteristics of Primary Care rotation of pediatric residents

Objetivo: determinar si en la Comunidad de Madrid (CM) la formación en Atención Primaria (AP) del médico interno residente (MIR) de Pediatría se adecúa a lo establecido en la Orden Ministerial SCO 3148/2006: rotación obligatoria y duración mínima de tres meses, siendo aconsejable su distribución en dos periodos (R1-R2 y R3- R4). Material y métodos: se realiza una encuesta telefónica o por correo electrónico, cumplimentada por un MIR de Pediatría y supervisada por un médico adjunto tutor de residentes. Se incluyen todos los hospitales de la CM con formación acreditada en dicha especialidad. Resultados: en la CM existen 19 hospitales con formación MIR en Pediatría, siendo en todos ellos la rotación por AP obligatoria. En un 58% (11/19) de ellos la duración es de tres meses, siendo inferior en el resto. En un 42% (8/19) de los casos la rotación se divide en dos periodos, aunque solo en cuatro centros según lo recomendado en la Orden Ministerial. Conclusiones: solo uno de cada cinco hospitales de la CM presenta una formación en AP de acuerdo a lo que aconseja la Orden Ministerial (AU)

Objective: to determine whether training in Primary Care (PC) during pediatric residency in the Autonomous Community of Madrid (ACM) follows the recommendations established in the Ministerial Order SCO 3148/2006: mandatory rotation with a minimum length of 3 months, being advisable to distribute it in two periods (R1-R2 and R3-R4). Material and methods: a survey by telephone or e-mail was carried out and answered by a pediatric resident and supervised by an attending physician, tutor of residents. All ACM hospitals with accredited training in this speciality were included. Results: in the ACM there are 19 hospitals with training in Pediatrics, and in all of them the rotation in PC is mandatory. In 58% (11/19) of them the rotation lasts for three months, being shorter in the rest. In 42% (8/19) of the cases, the rotation is divided into two periods, but only in 4 centers as recommended by the Ministerial Order. Conclusions: only in one out of five hospitals in the ACM is PC training organized according to the Ministerial Order (AU)