Currently, India has only 1.

7 nurses available per thousand population against WHO

recommendation of 2.5 nurses per thousand population. In other words, the country is
short of 2.5 million nurses.
The situation is worsening because of declining number of student enrolments and poor
educational facilities. This despite the fact that India churns out the highest number of
trained nurses in the world and is also amongst top five exporters of nurses.
International migration of nurses from India is also one of the major reasons of
shortage.

Impact of nursing staff shortage on hospitals (Financially)

1. Shortage of nursing staff leads to adverse events that causes patients to stay
longer than necessary.
2. Patient costs also increase exponentially if a hospital has shortage of trained
registered nurses.
3. Lack of nursing staff will lead to degraded treatment quality and ultimately harm
hospital’s image and patient intake.
4. Also, with adequate nursing staff Doctors are not overburdened and can work
efficiently.
5. Many organizations have tried replacing registered nurses with support staff to
cut costs, but the level of knowledge, expertise and practical aptitude that nurses
bring cannot be replaced
6. In nutshell, by maintaining a higher nurse-to-patient ratio, hospitals will gain a
competitive advantage and achieve higher overall financial performance in a
competitive hospital market.

What can be done to improve the situation?

1. Policy intervention is necessary in solving this long-standing problem of International
migration.
2. The priority in any policies formulated should be given to nurses working in the
private sector whose salaries are considerably lower than those in the public sector and
whose voices are unheard.
3. We need to incentivize nursing as a profession and include benefits like pension
schemes, Social security etc.