A WORLD WITHOUT NURSES

Have you ever envisioned a world without nurses and ask yourself " WHAT WILL IT MEAN?" There are more than 7 Billion people in the world today but we have only 17 million Nurses, this number is already few compared to the population they are already serving every day. So ask yourself " In a world without nurses, WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?"

FEWER NURSES MEANS

• Your life could shorter. This is already experienced in third world countries especially Kenya where the life expectancy has been reducing drastically.
• You have higher chances of getting serious infections. Serious infections that are treatable and preventable will take our loved ones away from us. 
• You may experience more complications from surgery or hospitalization. These are situation that no one ever appreciates since nurses prevent patients from these complications that would others wise do more harm or even kill the the patients.
• Less nurses could mean life and death for acute care patients. acute care patients need a nurse the most since they require round the clock care meaning that the fewer the nurses the higher the chances of death for this patients.

Nurses can help you live longer, healthier and even happier lives. What is SECRET do nurses have to ensure that  their patients live longer, healthier and happier lives?

• Nurses care for people not conditions and they evaluate the whole person. The care from nurses focus on the whole well being of their patients, they don't just focus on the disease that has brought you to the hospital. Nurses view the patient in the bigger picture 'their life in general'
• Nurses Educate people. Nurse are constantly interacting with their clients and teaching them how to live healthy and better health seeking behavior.
• Nurses make prevention their priority. In a country that doesn't appreciate the few nurses they have  means they don't appreciate that nurses prevent the expected from occurring.

While technology and research advances so does the knowledge and intelligence of nurses from tertiary study and clinical placement to Continued Professional Development (CPD). This happens because education improves quality of care that's why we have nurses with PhD, Masters, Degree and Diploma.

Nurses are also getting older more than half the nurses in the world are over 40 yrs, 20% of nurses in the world will reach the age of retirement  in the next 5 years. Many countries share the same problem, the critical shortage of nurses. The USA will need 1 million more nurses by 2020, Australian official estimate90000 will retire by 2020, in the United Kingdom around 180,000 are expected to retire within the next 10years.In Kenya we have a chronic shortage with more than half the nurses retiring soon since there has been no better solution despite the growing population. That is nearly half of the nurses.

In a world without nurses:

• who will care for your loved ones?
• who will manage people with chronic illness?
• who will look after you?

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?   YOU SHOULD. If your country has less nurses demand for more nurses don't really need to ask this for the citizens they serve. The citizens should ask this from the leaders they elected TO INCREASE THE NUMBER OF NURSES.