Shortage of Men in Healthcare Essay Assignment Paper

Imagine someone having a heart attack. Do you picture a man clutching his chest? Hollywood almost always portrays the “classic heart attack” by a man. In fact, even though heart disease is the leading killer of women worldwide, the misconception that heart disease is a men’s disease has persisted and it has had a negative impact on care for women. Shortage of Men in Healthcare Essay

Gender bias and misconception are by no means limited to heart-attack symptoms. That bias exists throughout the health-care system, from medical research to disease diagnostic and treatment approaches. If we are to address this grim reality with the urgency it requires, more attention must be paid by the broader public, who might not be aware of this dangerous gap in knowledge, and by scientists, who must include both sexes in biomedical research.

One notable example of gender bias in medicine is in the treatment of high-blood pressure, also known as hypertension. Hypertension affects one in five Canadian adults, based on a survey from Statistics Canada and is the leading cause of premature death in the developed world. Scientists have long shown that men generally have higher blood pressure and are at greater risk for heart and kidney diseases. Despite these well-known differences, men and women suffering from high-blood pressure are often prescribed the same medication. This one-size-fits-all approach is problematic: even though women with hypertension are more likely than men to be treated and take their medication, incredibly, only 45 per cent of treated women achieve blood-pressure control, compared to 51 per cent of treated men.

Historically, scientists conduct medical research studies primarily in male animals and men. In 1982, the Physician’s Health Study – a landmark study conducted by researchers at the Harvard Medical School – examined the effect of aspirin on heart disease and enrolled more than 22,000 participants. Strikingly, not a single one of them was female. In the 1970s, the Food and Drug Administration in the United States banned women of child-bearing age from being enrolled in phase one clinical trials. That ban remained for 20 years and was only lifted in 1993.

One reason for excluding females may be their menstrual cycles and fluctuating hormones, which scientists feared may limit the reliability and reproducibility of findings obtained in female subjects. Another deterrent may be cost: Repeating the experiments in both sexes would require twice the resources. For these reasons, experiments were often conducted in males, with the assumption that the findings would apply to females as well. Shortage of Men in Healthcare Essay

No doubt, the physiological differences between men and women aren’t enormous, but important, subtle differences exist. For example, men are on average larger than women. As a result, a recommended dosage calculated based on an average man’s size may cause an overdose in a smaller woman. Major sex differences also exist in the kidney, which may affect how some drugs are excreted from the body. Because of these sex differences, many diseases affect men and women differently and we respond to treatment differently as well.

Policy-makers have the ability to close the gender gap in medical research. Recent mandates from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) requiring the incorporation of Sex and Gender-Based Analysis in CIHR-funded research have raised the number of females included in experimental and clinical studies, although participation from women still lags that of men.

Increasingly, researchers are recognizing the importance of accounting for sex and gender as biological variables in biomedical research. But moving forward, researchers need to do more than simply asking the question of whether “sex differences” exist. Reporting a phenotype sex difference is important, but it is arguably even more important to understand the mechanistic basis underlying these observations. In other words, research studies must be large enough to generate data to assess sex-specific outcomes and for scientists to understand the physiological mechanisms underlying those outcomes.

The differences aren’t so hard to bridge. And what could be more important than making sure our health care is as precise as possible?

Nurses are the main professional and primary component of the staff in most health systems, and their contribution is recognized as essential in meeting these development goals and delivering safe and effective care. For many countries, one of the most problematic current human resource challenges is a shortage of nurses (Seifert, 2000).Nursing shortage is not just an organizational challenge or a topic for economic analysis; it has a major negative impact on health care. Failure to deal with a nursing shortage – be it local, regional, national or global – is likely to lead to failure to maintain or improve health care (Johnson, 2000). This paper will discuss the global nursing shortage and strategies for recruitment and retention. Causes of the current nursing shortage will be described, as well as, possible solutions to this shortage and identify potential or actual outcomes of the nursing shortage. In addition, nursing shortage in UAE will be explained. Shortage of Men in Healthcare Essay

Overview of nursing shortage

Andris, Nicholas, and Wolf, (2006) defined nursing shortage as “a situation where the demand for nurses is greater than the supply, as is currently the case in the United States and several other developed nations.” (p.147).The nation’s nursing shortage is projected to worsen significantly over the next two decades if current trends continue (Department of Health and Human Services, 2000).The report, titled Projected Supply, Demand, and Shortages of Registered Nursessays that” the shortage will deepen because increasing numbers of nurses are retiring while too few are entering the profession”. The national supply of registered nurses in 2000 was estimated at 1.89 million, while the demand was estimated at 2 million, for a shortage of 110,000, or 6 percent. In previous decades, nursing shortages in many countries have been a cyclical phenomenon, usually as a result of increasing demand outstripping static or more slowly growing supply of nurses. At the beginning of this new millennium, the situation is more serious. Driven by growing and ageing populations, demand for health care and for nurses continues to grow, whilst the supply of available nurses has actually fallen in some developed and developing countries(Buchan, 2002). Shortages may not relate only to clinical nurses; in some countries there is a critical shortage of nurse tutors and educators, which will constrain any attempts to increase the numbers of educated nurses(Goodin, 2003).

Reasons for nursing shortage

On the other hand, the amount of nursing responsibilities has increased and it may be possible to argue that the patients are more ill as a result. In addition, the average age of nurses’ increases while the number of applications to baccalaureate programs has decreased (Stone, Clarke, Cimiotti, & Correa-de-Araujo, 2004)furthermore, new opportunities became available for the nursing practice, which further drains the number of nurses available for the acute care settings. Shortage of Men in Healthcare Essay

Job dissatisfaction

Defining professional identity, of course, is not straight forward. It invites thorny questions of what it means to be a nurse and the strength of nursing’s claim to be a profession. In the nursing literature as a whole there are many concerns about nursing’s lack of recognition and the possible reasons for this (Wieck, 2003). Several studies have been done to understand how nurses feel about their career. About 5 years agoThupayagale, &Dithole, (2005) identified that nursing has for many years struggled with an inner hunger, a deep need for professional congruency and effectiveness. The perception by many people, except those aligned to nursing, see nursing as an inferior and inadequate undertaking to be regarded as a profession.While Anderson, (2000, p. 53) marks it as a ‘doing’ culture that ‘values or at least tolerates being oppressed’. Salvage (2006, p. 260) argues that nursing perceived as ‘dirty work’ for ‘softies’. Forsyth, & McKenzie, (2006) identified some of the dissatisfaction as stemming from frequent schedule changes, overloads, shift work, lack of appreciation by superiors and colleagues, as well as lack of childcare. Inadequate pay was identified as a lesser problem. A comprehensive literature review done by Hayes, Pallas, Duffield, Shamian, Buchan, Hughes, et al (2006) concluded that the dissatisfaction among nurses focused on conflicting expectations from nurses and managers due to regulation of cost, lack of opportunity to provide comprehensive nursing care, and disillusioned workforce or loss of confidence in, and frustration with, the healthcare system.In addition, limitations to comprehensive care were identified because nurses are overloaded with the number of assigned patients, massive paperwork for billing purposes, and short staffing to cut cost are the major reasons for nurses job dissatisfaction. Shortage of Men in Healthcare Essay

Nursing shortage impacts

A recent study which was conducted by (Buerhaus, Donelan, Ulrich, Norman, Desroches, &Dittus. 2007) of the nursing shortage shows that views on the shortage’s effects on hospital patient care vary widely. The researchers analyzed the results of three national surveys of registered nurses, physicians, and hospital executives. The results of the study show that the nursing shortage has negatively impacted communication, nurse-patient relationships and timeliness of care and overall efficiency. The study further shows that there are broad differences among various health care professionals regarding approaches to improving patient care safety.

According to this study showed that nursing shortage has the following effects. First, it increases nurses` patient loads which Increases the risk for errors. Besides, it increases risk of spreading infection to patients and staffs. Finally, it Increases risk for occupational injury which might lead to Increased deaths.Consequently, it affects the nurses’ life and career. As was explained in a study was conducted by (Aiken, Clarke, Sloane, Sochalski, & Silber,October, 2002) that an Increase in nursing turnover, Increase perception of unsafe working conditions, contributing to increase shortage, and hindering local or national recruitment efforts, as well as, Increase the nurses chance of getting psychiatric help because of massive amounts of stress.

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