Background: Strong nursing faculty is paramount to promote disciplinary leadership and to prepare future nurses for practice. Our understanding of the factors associated with or predictive of nurse faculty retention and/or turnover is lacking.
Purpose: The aim of this review is to identify and synthesize the existing literature on factors contributing to nurse faculty shortage in Canada and implications on nursing practice.
Methods: A scoping review based on the Arskey and O'Malley's five stage framework for scoping reviews was undertaken. Utilizing the PRISMA protocol, a comprehensive and structured literature search was conducted in five databases of studies published in English.
Findings: Limited through search inclusion and relevance of research, nine studies out of 220 papers met the criteria for this review and were thematically analyzed. Identified themes were supply versus demand; employment conditions; organizational support; and personal factors.
Discussion: Impending retirement of faculty, unsupportive leadership, and stressful work environments were frequently reported as significant contributing factors to the faculty shortage.
Conclusion: This scoping review provides insights into how Canada's schools of nursing could engage in grounded efforts to lessen nursing faculty shortage, both nationally and globally. We identified a gap in the literature that indicates that foundational work is needed to create context-specific solutions. The limited studies published in Canada suggest that this is a critical area for future research and funding.
Keywords: Canada; Educator; Nurse faculty; Nursing academic workforce; Nursing faculty shortage; Scoping review.
Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.