AHS 2020

1
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................3

1. Challenges facing nursing profession in Australia.................................................3

2. How challenges to the nursing profession in Australia impact organisation......5

3. Organisational efforts.................................................................................................6

3.1 In developing comprehensive policy and process in improving the capacity

and skills of the nursing profession..........................................................................6

3.2 Developing leadership capacity among all health professionals.....................8

Conclusion.......................................................................................................................9

References......................................................................................................................10

2
Introduction
Australia has one of the finest healthcare systems in the world due to its significant
healthcare outcomes, equity, and access and care process. However, the country is
currently facing problems in its healthcare sustainability due to the increasing number of
the elderly population. A competent and skilled workforce is required for improving the
efficiency of the healthcare services, which is also important for the sustainability of the
Australian health arrangement.

The main purpose of this reading is to examine the challenges facing the nursing
profession in Australia. It will then examine how the overall challenges in the nursing
profession impact the health organisation. It will also inspect the administrative efforts in
mounting comprehensive processes and policy in developing the capacity and skills of
the nursing profession to maximise perforce. At last, the study will inspect the
organisational efforts in evolving leadership capacity among all the health professionals.

1. Challenges facing nursing profession in Australia

Australian healthcare services have achieved good ranking internationally, which is
reflected by its continuous development in the life expectancy and decline in infant
mortality. Nurses play a crucial role in the development of the healthcare system in a
country. They are vital to all the healthcare settings and take pride in the care they
deliver each day (Gardner, 2004). However, nurses in Australian also face many
challenges in the current complicate healthcare situation. Here are some of the major
challenges facing the nursing profession in Australia:

Recruitment and retention of the nurses: due to the increasing ageing population,
there are shortages of nurses in Australia. This shortage results in the discrepancy in
the patient’s care and delivery. Furthermore, the decline in the education of the nurses
and decrease in the nursing educated workers is also not recognised properly, with the
unavailability of suitable policies. In a location with shortages, nurses have concerned
towards patient’s services as they don’t have time to deliver the care they consider is
required for patients (Humphreys et al., 2018). There has been a noteworthy turnover in
many of the healthcare organisations and settings. Insufficient employment is one of the

3
top causes nurses are displeased in the place of work. Healthcare organisations in
Australia are facing a serious challenge in providing adequate staffing. One primary
concern involved in it is the swelling figure of skilled nurses who are retiring. Due to
shortage, many nurses delays their retirement, re-enter the workers or increase their
shifting hours. In Australia, the shortage of nurses is most prevalent in the rural and
remote areas, mainly in the Indigenous committees and in precise parts of care such as
aged care, mental health and disability care (Humphreys et al., 2018). Thee shortages
of the workforce are the consequences of different mechanism such as job
dissatisfaction, early retirement, working through an agency and long functioning hours.

Workplace hazards and violence: Nurses are exposed to several workshop hazards
such as injuries, hand washing allied dermatitis, cold and flu germs and bloodborne
pathogens. Workplace violence is also another pressing problem for nurses. Healthcare
workers in the inpatient services have experienced significantly higher projected rates of
non-fatal injuries related to private-sector workers overall. However, hospitals in
Australia have done an improved job in declining workplace dangers and violence
(Janssens et al., 2018). Many of the healthcare organisations in the country have
introduced safe pass zones in their working rooms, which has resulted in a significant
reduction of sharp injuries to nurses. Furthermore, bringing added awareness to the
injuries have created an urgency about understanding the reasons and assessing the
best practices.

Ethical and legal issues: These challenges are faced by nurses in Australia when they
act as an advocate for the client. They are frequently confronted with the ethical and
legal challenges related to the care given to the clients. Nurses while giving treatment to
the patients have to follow the ethical codes (Janssens et al., 2018). The care provided
by the nurses to the patients is frequently confronted with legal and ethical challenges.
The main objective of these codes in Australia is to identify and analyse the
fundamental and ethical standard which could help in the committed nursing profession.
However, in several situations, nurses could find themselves in direct conflict with these
legal and ethical codes.

4
Bullying and harassment: In Australia, nurses also practise bullying and harassment.
Connell & Walton-Roberts conducted a poll in 2016 showed that 56 per cent of the
nurses said that they had been harried by the patient while working. Harassment here
means patients stalking and wrong contact (Humphreys et al., 2018). Nurses have had
personal involvement with physical or verbal exploitation on the job. The survey also
stated that many of the nurses have been physically assaulted at work. However, many
of the Australian healthcare organisations insist that there are practices and policies in
setting for keeping the nurses safe, such as security, lockdown procedures and
firearms.

2. How challenges to the nursing profession in Australia impact organisation

Nursing is the occupation within the healthcare segment concentrated on the care of
individuals, families and societies so that they can reach, uphold or recuperate the ideal
health and quality of life (Chin et al., 2019). Nurses are important for healthcare
organisations as they are on the forefronts of managing and accessing the treatment.
For patients, nurses are the best advocate as they spend more time with them. Along
with providing medical treatments, nurses also deliver priceless emotional care to the
patients. They comprehend the difficulties and inferences of an illness. They also
provide counsel to the patients and their families. Their familiarity with illness is
combined with exceptional personal skills that provide relaxation and steadiness.
However, the healthcare sector in Australia is experiencing a nurse’s shortage along
with a lack of qualified nurses. For healthcare, this shortage of nurses could have been
wide-reaching and even have dangerous consequences (Chin et al., 2019). The
Australian Government have anticipated a forthcoming scarcity of nurses in the country.
The prediction claims that the nursing profession in the country will experience a
shortage of more than 100,000 nurses by 2025. Several factors contribute to this
impending shortage of workforce in the healthcare industry. Factors like retention of the
workforce, job satisfaction, bullying and harassment have impacted the most important
healthcare profession.

There are several impacts of these challenges in the healthcare organisation. One of
the major impacts is that organisation have to face is longer or multiple shifts. Nurses

5
have to work hours or multiple shifts to recompense for the shortages in the healthcare
specialists (Creegan, Duffield & Forrester, 2003). This longer and multiple shifts in the
nurse's position lead to health issues, physical and emotional risks and fatigue. Another
impact that healthcare organisation have to face is the loss of healthcare professionals.
As the necessity for more nurses and other healthcare workers deteriorates, the
pressure would become more discouraged, resulting in the exiting work (Creegan,
Duffield & Forrester, 2003). The long working hours, challenging working conditions,
heavy workloads and pay rates are some of the impacts caused by these challenges.

Another impact that nursing profession challenges bring is the influx of overseas
healthcare workers. Shortages in the profession will force organisations to create a
need to bring in foreign doctors, nurses and other healthcare staffs for compensating for
the current requirement. Healthcare organisations need to understand their foreign
staffs can only come to help in the current situation. Challenges such as the shortage of
nurses and harassment and bullying issue also decrease the excellence of care. When
nurses are exasperating to take care of more patients during the shifts, they are not
able to spend the kind of time they would like for taking care of the patients. Some of
the patients require more time due to their healthcare needs.

Both the healthcare service provider and patients suffer from the lack of sufficient
nurses in the organisation. The most intense impact is on rural communities. For
example, it is by this time hard to employ doctors and nurses in remote zones and to
recruit qualified workers in a small population. The labour shortage degrades the health
differences in the rural population compared to urban areas. In healthcare
organisations, the risk of medical errors might increase. Exhaustion from the heavy jobs
could upsurge the danger of medical faults. Furthermore, very few team members
would be able to catch mistakes.

3. Organisational efforts
3.1 In developing comprehensive policy and process in improving the capacity
and skills of the nursing profession
There is an aggregating focus on refining the healthcare to ensure higher quality and
greater aces. In recent years, many healthcare organisations have developed training

6
programmes to teach nurses about the required skills and capacity in the nursing
profession. The quality improvement training program in healthcare organisations is
solely aimed to teach healthcare professionals about the methods to analyse and
develop the quality. Several courses about the techniques, such as figures and
leadership, suggestion based medication are included in the program to improve the
quality.

Quality improvement has been well-defined in several ways in the training programs of
the nurses. One of the comprehensive policy used by healthcare organisations is the
PDSA cycles and total quality management. From the last few years, the central
healthcare division of the country are offering several quality improvement courses,
leading academics and strategic health authorities (Huveneers et al., 2017). CPD for
improving the capacity and skills of the nurses includes online options, co-operative, ad
hoc training to support the specific development projects.

Another comprehensive policy used by healthcare organisations in Australia is

collaborative. It combines the structured learning, applied projects and sharing of info
between the providers. In this collaborative technique, teams of nurses were taught how
to study, test and implement the systematic improvements in care procedures.
Collaborative have been applied by healthcare organisations to develop the superiority
of care and teach quality improvement approaches in the wide series of care areas and
discipline.

Setting clear goals and providing feedbacks can also improve the capacity and skills of
the nurses. Many times, the duties and responsibilities of nurses are not defined as it
gets changed on the situation (Nightingale, 2020). Nurses will be more motivated at the
workplace if they know what has been expected from them. Clearly stating their goals
and providing clear guidance to everyone will improve the skills and capacity of the
nurses. Short-term goals and clear duties are effective in encouraging the nurses to
properly manager their speed in doing tasks to meet the targets. Providing nurses with
clear duties and responsibilities will not create any additional workload on them.

Healthcare workers often work in a challenging and stressful environment. Many of the
complaints against the workers are related to poor communication and the stress and

7
anxiety felt by healthcare mainly due to difficulties in dealing with patients and their
families (Byrne, Happell & Reid‐Searl, 2017). Due to this workload, healthcare workers
often don’t have skills or time to communicate well with the patients or communities. For
the capacity building, many health organisations do different activities such as
workshops and training for stress and burnout, effective communication and
management and leadership skills. There are also soft skills development training
material for the workers.

3.2 Developing leadership capacity among all health professionals

In healthcare organisations, leadership task is to certify direction, arrangement and
obligation within the teams and organisations. Direction from the leaders ensures the
agreement and pride amongst the people in association with what organisation is trying
to achieve, with a steady vision, values and strategies. Alignment from the leaders is
referred towards the operative incorporation and synchronisation at the work. On the
other hand, the pledge is displayed in the establishment for taking accountability and
making it a personal priority (Belrhiti, Giralt & Marchal, 2018). Operative leaders in the
healthcare services emphasise continually that are safe, high quality and
compassionate care. Leaders confirm that the voice of the patients are consistently
heard at every level and patients concerns and experiences are consistently appeared
(Nightingale, 2020). Leaders in healthcare ensure that everyone in the organisation is
clear about what they are requisite to do and then provide an optimistic and helpful
response based on performance. They are also responsible for promoting the continued
growth of the knowledge, skills and abilities of the staffs to develop the quality of the
patient care and experience.

For increasing the number of nurses capable of leadership, the healthcare organisations
need to address two critical issues. The efforts need to be made to increase the faculty
and students’ conceptualisation of nursing such that leadership is viewed as the
dimension of practice for all the nurses (Belrhiti, Giralt & Marchal, 2018). For improving
leadership capacities, healthcare professionals need discipline. Developing the
discipline in the professional and personal life I required to be an effective leader.

8
People often judge the capacity of the leaders by the amount of discipline they display
at work.

Furthermore, leaderships in healthcare needs to be reliable in terms of leadership styles

and behaviours; in mounting the shared leadership across the establishment. Leaders
must work together and build a culture where the health and attainment of the patient
and his care is the priority of every leader (Byrne, Happell & Reid‐Searl, 2017).
Huveneers et al., (2017) suggest that healthcare professionals for developing their
leadership capacity need to develop their situational awareness. He states that a good
leader is someone who can see a bigger picture and could anticipate the problems
before they occur.

Conclusion
In conclusion, it could be said that the profession of nurses are in demand in Australia
and the above-mentioned data showed that it is going to increase. The nature of
healthcare in Australia is also changing with the rising costs of technology and
treatment with an increase in the patient’s expectations. For meeting the future demand
of nurses in the country, healthcare organisations could hire nurses from overseas and
could invest in long term training and professional development. It is also identified that
leaders must work organized and build cultures where the patient’s success is the
priority of every leader.

9
References
Belrhiti, Z., Giralt, A. N., & Marchal, B. (2018). Complex leadership in healthcare: a
scoping review. International journal of health policy and management, 7(12),
1073.

Byrne, L., Happell, B., & Reid‐Searl, K. (2017). Acknowledging rural disadvantage in
mental health: Views of peer workers. Perspectives in psychiatric care, 53(4),
259-265.

Chin, W., Guo, Y. L. L., Hung, Y. J., Hsieh, Y. T., Wang, L. J., & Shiao, J. S. C. (2019).
Workplace justice and intention to leave the nursing profession. Nursing
ethics, 26(1), 307-319.

Connell, J., & Walton-Roberts, M. (2016). What about the workers? The missing
geographies of health care. Progress in Human Geography, 40(2), 158-176.

Creegan, R., Duffield, C., & Forrester, K. (2003). Casualisation of the nursing workforce
in Australia: driving forces and implications. Australian Health Review, 26(1),
201-208.

Dalton, L., Campbell, S., & Bull, R. (2018). Preparing the nursing workforce for the next
era: Re-classifying and reframing enrolled nursing knowledge. Collegian, 25(2),
237-240. (Dalton, Campbell & Bull, 2018)

Gardner, G. E. (2004). Issues in nurse practitioner developments in Australia. In Cancer

forum (Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 132-134). Cancer Council of Australia.

Humphreys, J. S., Wakerman, J., Perkins, D., Lyle, D., & McGrail, M. (2018). Access &
equity in the provision of primary health care services in rural and remote Australia.

Huveneers, C., Meekan, M. G., Apps, K., Ferreira, L. C., Pannell, D., & Vianna, G. M.
(2017). The economic value of shark-diving tourism in Australia. Reviews in Fish
Biology and Fisheries, 27(3), 665-680.

Janssens, S., Simon, R., Beckmann, M., & Marshall, S. (2018). Shared Leadership in
Healthcare Action Teams: A Systematic Review. Journal of patient safety.

10
Nightingale, A. (2020). Implementing collective leadership in healthcare
organisations. Nursing Standard (Royal College of Nursing (Great Britain): 1987).

11