Many countries are facing nursing shortages for various reasons relating to a widening gap between supply and demand. Some, like the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and countries in Western Europe, simply do not have enough new nurses to cater for the higher demand for medical services.

Other countries in Asia, South America and even Africa have seen so many of their nurses migrating to Western countries that they now face serious shortages themselves.

So it comes as no surprise that in the context of the recently announced plans to increase hospital capacity in Malta, the nurses union, MUMN, expressed concern that there will not be “enough nurses for new projects”. In fact, even if no new hospital capacity is created in the coming years, public as well as private hospitals will struggle to meet the demand for nursing graduates.

The growing need for nurses is driven by various factors. The baby boom generation of 1946 to 1964 was followed by the decade-long baby bust when the birth rate in most Western countries fell drastically. An ageing population and a baby boom bubble, which now requires heathcare services, is coinciding with droves of nurses who are retiring from the profession.

At the same time, fewer younger people are being attracted to nursing.

The MUMN has good reason to fret that the new projects in healthcare that were announced recently will pile more pressure on their members unless “300 new nurses are recruited every year”.

It argues that a major reason why young people are not attracted to nursing is that “the nursing courses are too stringent”. Many find it difficult to agree with the argument that, because nursing courses are deemed to be “too difficult”, the University should make such studies“less stringent”.

A more convincing argument on how to bridge the skills gap in the nursing profession is that nurses should be better paid to attract more qualified young people to the profession. Even if working in a caring profession is more of a vocation than a job, financial issues will always be a high priority for young people when planning their career.

It is simply unacceptable to offer nurses low salaries only because we expect them to be motivated by their inborn inclination to care for others rather than by the need to also cater for their family’s financial needs.

Now that Malta is aiming not just to upgrade medical services for locals but also to promote medical tourism, it is crucially important to have good strategies to attract more young people to become nurses.

One of the first things that needs to be done is to reposition nursing as a highly versatile profession where young people can learn science and technology, customer service, critical thinking and decision-making. To promote this ambitious profile of nursing, nurses’ salaries need to be commensurate with that of graduates in other professions who are expected to have similar skills.

Equally important is the need to evaluate the effects of the present and forecast nursing shortages on the preparation of the next generation of nurse educators and administrators and take strategic action to address the risk of acute shortages in future.

The mission of any high quality nursing system should always be to develop excellence in nursing practice, education, research and leadership to provide the public with the highest possible standards of nursing services.