According to the Office of Manpower Economics (OME) (2003), 7.9 of nursing workers in the UK left the Health Safety Environment (HSE) in 2003. The breadth of this “wastage” is equivalent to 33,300 nurses annually, given that nurses make up around 239,000 of the HSE’s staff members.
The shortage of nurses in the hospital has a number of effects on the healthcare industry in the UK. This shortage directly impacts the services that are provided in hospitals (Pongton et al., 2019). Dziuba et al. (2020) suggested that the increase in technology has changed the working style in the hospital. Hence, the department needs a greater number of people. Furthermore, the increase in the number of diseases and frequent illnesses has increased the number of patients in hospitals, and this the also the reason for this shortage (Storey et al., 2019). Hence, this leads to more demand for nurses in hospitals.
As per the World Health Organization (WHO), nurses are an essential part of society and are playing an essential role in the department of health services. They are a vital connection in the provision of healthcare and the bolstering of the healthcare system because they make up 50% of the healthcare workforce in several nations around the world. Just because these nurses are facing a crisis and it is also predicted that by the next year, the shortage of nurses will increase (Health Safety and environment, 2022).
There are a number of factors that are the reasons for this shortage such as the aging population, growth in population, and the rise in chronic and non-communicable diseases are some of the main contributors to the increase in demand over the years (International Council of Nurses, 2006). The WHO further predicted that by 2050, the percentage of people over 60 in the world’s population will nearly double from 12% to 22%, demonstrating that the demand for nurses would only rise in the future.