Chaos and fractals

Chaos and fractals

April 20, 2005 -- A brief unsigned item dated today on the 123bharath / India News Channel web site reports that the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Bahrain faces a nursing shortage. The piece indicates that the shortage is due at least in part to the growing competition from Europe and the United States for the skilled nurses that the tiny but wealthy Gulf nation used to recruit easily from Asia.

The piece notes that 30% of the Bahrain Health Ministry's total workforce is nurses, and that the nation has about 44.4 nurses for each 10,000 persons (which is perhaps half as many nurses as many developed nations have). WHO nursing and health policy consultant Fadwa Affara reportedly told the Gulf Daily News that Bahrain needed to "improve nursing services and nursing education to make it a more attractive profession where people want to stay and who are able to provide excellent care to the community," because recruiting of nurses by Europe and the U.S. is making it difficult for Bahrain to get the nurses it needs. Her solution: "you need to rely on developing your own resources."

Pieces like this one suggest that the nursing shortage is a complex, interrelated global system driven by various economic, social and other forces. In this system, it seems that everything affects everything else, and there are no easy solutions. But "developing your own resources" sounds like a pretty good place to start.

See the article "Bahrain faces shortage of nurses: WHO" from the April 20, 2005 edition of 123bharath.