Why the Nursing Profession is Rapidly Losing its Appeal in Europe
The nursing profession is rapidly losing its appeal in Europe. This surprising finding has stoked increasing concerns about how healthcare systems will meet human resources needs in the coming decades, even as the aging population means demands upon those systems will only increase.
The decline of nursing was highlighted in a recent study by Dutch researchers, published in theInternational Journal of Nursing Studies. They found that "a shortage of nurses at the labour market exists or is predicted for most European countries." The researchers surveyed 385 hospitals in ten countries around Europe and reported that about 9% of currently practicing nurses are planning on quitting and finding a new profession. Nurses complained about their relationships with doctors, a feeling of alienation from how their hospital was managed, high stress and burnout.
If nurses were leaving the profession at a time when there were plenty available, and many new graduates to fill vacancies, then the problem would not be as urgent. However, these decisions by a growing number of individual nurses are being made at a time when the healthcare system already lacks the necessary professional staff to meet service objectives. According to theWorld Health Organization, although there are about 6 million nurses and midwives in the European Union, "this number is not adequate to meet current and projected future needs." It adds that migration from lower-income eastern Europe to generally more affluent western Europe has stemmed the shortage in the west at the expense of exacerbating shortages in the east. For those who can immigrate within the European Union, thedifference in paycan be striking: a nurse earns perhaps $2800 US per month in Britain, compared to just $200 in Romania.
But even that, according to many sources, can't correct the shortfall even in the affluent West. The WHO says that the U.K. has "an estimated shortage of 40,000 nurses." German researchers haveprojecteda shortage of half a million nurses by 2030.
Recently, aCNN investigationconfirmed anecdotally what the Dutch researchers reported earlier this year. "It's hard to work as a nurse in Poland," explained one RN (registered nurse), Katarzyna Kaseja, to a CNN reporter. Kasena complained that "there are not enough nurses," that the job lacks "prestige," and that the pay is too low. Paul De Raeve, the secretary general of the European Federation of Nurses Associations, which represents professional nursing organizations across the continent, agreed with Kasena, saying that "people are leaving the profession because they can't stand the difficult work anymore" and that "the young generation thinks you must be a fool to go into nursing."
So far, however, there appear to be few solutions. Even if the problem was simply that nurses aren't paid enough, cash-strapped healthcare systems can ill afford a dramatic increase in costs. In Germany, some hospitals are experimenting with casting their recruitment net even further afield, recruiting hundreds ofChinese nursesto come to Europe as temporary workers. For now, however, there have been no major, organized efforts to ramp up nurse training and retain current nurses in the numbers that healthcare system planners believe will be needed over the coming decades.
