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The authors have disclosed no potential conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise.
During 2011, the retirement of Baby Boomers began. More specifically, approximately 10,000 individuals will reach age 65 each day for the next 13 to 14 years ( Cohn & Taylor, 2010 ). The complex, multi-focused, acute and chronic health care needs of this growing, aging, and diverse cohort of older adults will result in an increasing need for nurses with special skills, exceptional dedication, and gerontological expertise. This ever-increasing need for health care professionals is being compounded by the dramatic reduction of experienced nurses who provide services in the acute hospital setting. The needs of this ever-expanding older adult cohort combined with the nursing shortage will evolve into a crisis situation unless some innovative care delivery strategies are discussed, planned, and executed. The purpose of the current editorial is to (a) present the conditions that contribute to the acute care nurse shortage; (b) identify strategies that could increase health care access to older adults, which may reduce their likelihood of hospitalization; and (c) propose a mechanism that could assist in reducing hospitalizations while increasing the interactions between older adults and experienced nurses in a nonclinical community setting.
Acute Care Nurse Shortage
The accelerating health care needs of the Baby Boomer cohort, the retirement/withdrawal of experienced acute care nurses, and the resultant administrative actions (e.g., mandatory overtime, increased workloads) continually exacerbate the crisis. Administrative mandates contribute to the cycle of increased job stress that leads to increased nurse turnover resulting in understaffing, which ultimately further accelerates the acute nursing shortage problem. Interrupting this cycle mandates new strategies to resolve the situation. To reduce the ever-increasing need for acute care by the Baby Boomer cohort, interventions that could meet the needs of older adults, reduce hospitalizations, foster community support, and provide an extended career path for dedicated, aging, experienced acute care nurses must be proposed, designed, initiated, and evaluated.
Some of the non-health consequences of the aging process include the lack of adequate retirement funds, fear of injury/ victimization, an inability to perform physically demanding work, and social isolation. The aging nurse workforce is confronted...