NURSING SHORTAGE PARADIGM: THE BAYELSA STATE SITUATION

This paper attempted to educate the reader about the shortage of nursing staff and how it affects Bayelsa State’s health sector. Bayelsa State like any other state in Nigeria has enormous health challenges associated with manpower shortage. Bayelsa’s situation is unique because of its terrain. Some factors such as cost of river transport, insecurity of lives and properties due to incessant attacks from sea pirates, poor housing, lack of portable water, deplorable state of hospitals and health centres, erratic or lack of power supply, inadequate nursing personnel, and uneven distribution of the few nurses available, were identified to be peculiar with Bayelsa terrain. This consequently resulted in  increased nurse- patient load, risk for error, infection spread, high mortality rate, quackery and chances of nurses being over stressed. Recommendation such as increase in the rural posting allowance for nurses, provision of social amenities in rural areas, employment of more nurses from various states of the federation among others were made.