Can a single person possibly be responsible for the wellbeing of 10 or more people in one day? The answer is no. But nurses seem to experience this every day when they arrive to work. Nurses do not get a break, they do not get a chance to rest or even have time to eat because they never know when their patient is going to go into shock, cardiac arrest, or even flat line. This constant pressure on nurses to perform their very best to every single patient can lead to them making careless mistakes throughout the day that they would not have made if they were not overworked. The cause of this is the staffing issue that is, unfortunately, common in most hospitals that have a high ratio of patients to nurse. This issue has not only taken a toll on …show more content…
The provision of appropriate nurse staffing is necessary to reach safe, quality outcomes; it is achieved by dynamic, multifaceted decision-making processes that must take into account a wide range of variables” There are two different types of nursing one being centralized and the other is decentralized. Centralized staffing occurs when one department must staff all units, and decentralized is when unit leaders such as managers must regulate the level of staffing that must occur before and during a shift based on different circumstances. All hospitals do not use the same staffing method. Some might use budget based where nursing staff is billed per nursing hours per patient day, while other uses the nurse-patient ratio where the number of nurse per patient controls the staffing level, and lastly some hospitals go by the patient acuity where patient characteristics are used to regulate a shifts staffing needs (What Every Nurse Should Know about Staffing, 2014). No one method is better than the other and most hospitals seem to use all three, but one should question how accurately these methods are accomplished when there are so many nurses complaining about the hours they work and the number of patients that they are responsible for, and so many patients suffering from the lack care they are receiving …show more content…
For there to be a solution there must be recognition of the problem. Although, staffing is the main issue that nurses are dealing with now there are many underlying contributors to it. One being that with the knowledge of the stress that nurses and the shortage of staff some families feel that hospitals are not the safest environment for their loved one to be in. In order to solve this issue nurses, need, speak out about the issues they are undergoing to the public to get them to truly to understand what it is that nurses do in their field, and to gain recognition that they deserve (The Nursing Shortage: Solutions for the Short and Long Term). Another possible solution would be for hospitals to “incorporate qualitative factors into the staffing,” meaning that hospitals should go beyond numbers but instead should focus on assigning nurses that have specific skill sets to patients that require that attention (Safe Nurse Staffing: Looking Beyond the Raw Numbers). This ensures that patients get the proper care that they pay for and that nurses get to use their experience to help their
Over the last decades both public and private hospitals have been experiencing severe financial situations (Everhart, Neff, Al-Amin, Nogle, & Weech-Maldonado, 2013). The financial shortage is associated with delay or even lack of governmental sponsorship and competition from their rivals. Enacting the policy will mount financial pressure on these hospitals that are on cost-cutting strategies. The salaries and wages of nurses are dominating the costs of operation in the hospitals and therefore adding more staff to correct the understaffing will be like creating another problem (Goddard, 2003). Contrary, Empirical studies prove that adequate nurse staffing produces better outcomes for both the staffs and the patients (Donaldson & Shapiro, 2010). These do not mean that the financial performance of the health centers will be at stake. Quality is associated with profitability. Understaffing leads to increased workloads, fatigue and job dissatisfaction. These situations that can be corrected on the implementation of proper staffing policies (Everhart, Neff, Al-Amin, Nogle, & Weech-Maldonado, 2013). The policy aims at offering quality service, reasonable patient-doctor ratios, reducing high mortality rates, improving the health of patients through proper examination and disease diagnosis among other
Providing the best care to each patient starts with providing the proper amount of staff members to each unit. Looking at the needs of different units not only allows administration to see areas for improvement, but also areas that are being handled correctly. Utilizing the indicators provided by The Joint Commission, 4 East, a pediatric medical/surgical floor, has a high rate of falls and nosocomial pressure ulcers that appears to be related to the increase overtime nurses have been working for that floor (Nightingale, 2010). Research has shown increases in adverse events have been related to nurses working over 40 hours a week (Bae, 2012).
Staffing needs affect the nursing department’s budget, staff productivity, the quality of care provided to patients and even the retention of nurses (Jooste, 2013). The nurse manager has to explain to the management of the benefits of change in providing adequate staffing all the time. Adequate staffing helps staff retention. Staff retention saves a lot of money in terms of orienting new people to the unit. Safe staffing always helps in the reduction of falls, infection rates, pressure ulcers, decrease hospital stays and death. Flexible and creative scheduling is essential for retaining staff and promoting a positive work climate (Grohar-Murray & Langan, 2011). Adequate staffing with good staffing ratio will help nurses to concentrate on their patient care which may help in a reduction in medical errors and lawsuits to the hospital.
Nurse staffing and how it relates to the quality of patient care has been an important issue in the field of nursing for quite some time. This topic has been particularly popular recently due to the fact that there is an increasing age among those who make up the Baby Boomer era in the United States. There will be a greater need for nurse staffing to increase to help accommodate the higher demand of care. Although nursing is “the top occupation in terms of job growth,” there are still nursing shortages among various hospitals across America today. The shortage in nurses heavily weighs on the overall quality of care that each individual patient receives during their hospital stay (Rosseter, 2014).
nurse staffing ensures quality nursing care for patients and can be a challenge for nurse
Nurse-to-patient ratios is not a new topic of debate for all of us who deliver care to patients every day. Only lately it has been a big issue that have caught the attention of many. Demands by the medical community for changes concerning staffing, asking for the government interventions in minimum staffing laws. Registered nurses have long acknowledged and continue to emphasize that staffing issues are an ongoing concern, one that influences the safety of both the patient and the nurse. (ANA, 2015) .nowadays hospitals are running for profit and the emphasis is not put on job burnout, stress, and endangerment of patients. Nursing shortages is a very pertinent problem, it will be optimum to have laws in place to help with the issue, however meanwhile leadership and management methods to the matter can help to mend the nursing situation and avoid many of the damaging effects of unfitting nurse-to-patient ratios.
Appropriate nurse staffing is a complex topic that has arisen as a nationwide healthcare issue within the profession of Registered Nurses (RN). To truly understand the concept of staffing one must understand that staffing and scheduling are often at times used interchangeably although Mensik (2014) noted a distinct difference between the two (p. 2). The American Nurse Association [ANA] (2012) has defined appropriate nurse staffing “as a match of registered nurse expertise with the needs of the recipient of nursing care services in the context of the practice setting and situation” (p. 6). Scheduling, in contrast, involves taking into account factors such as a unit’s historical census numbers along with anticipated surgical volumes
Stanton, M. R. (2004, March). Hospital Nurse Staffing and Quality of Care. Research in Action. Rockville, MD, USA: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
The American Nurses Association supports a legislative model in which nurses are encouraged to create staffing plans specific to each unit. This approach will aide in establishing staffing levels that are flexible and can be changed based on the patients needs, number of admissions to the unit, discharges and transfers during each shift (“Nurse staffing plans,” 2013). This model will assist in keeping the unit staffed appropriately and organized in need of a change during each shift. Without an organized plan like this, a nurse may be required to take on a new admission and already have too big of a workload.
Inconsistent nurse-patient ratios are a concern in hospitals across the nation because they limit nurse’s ability to provide safe patient care. Healthcare professionals such as nurses and physicians agree that current nurse staffing systems are inadequate and unreliable and not only affect patient health outcomes, but also create job dissatisfaction among medical staff (Avalere Health, 2015). A 2002 study led by RN and PhD Linda Aiken suggests that "forty percent of hospitals nurses have burnout levels that exceed the norms for healthcare workers" (Aiken, Clarke, Sloane, Sochalski & Silber, 2002). These data represents the constant struggle of nurses when trying to provide high quality care in a hospital setting.
Nurse staffing have an effect on a variety of areas within nursing. Quality of care is usually affected. Hospitals with low staffing tend to have higher incidence of poor patient outcomes. Martin, (2015) wrote an article on how insufficient nursing staff increases workload and job dissatisfaction, which in effect decreases total patient care over all. When nurse staffing is inadequate, the ability to practice ethically becomes questionable. Time worked, overtime, and total hours per week have significant effect on errors. When nurses works long hours, the more likely errors will be made. He also argued that inadequate staffing not only affects their patients but also their loved ones, future and current nursing staff, and the hospitals in which they are employed. An unrealistic workload may result in chronic fatigue, poor sleep patterns, and absenteeism thus affecting the patients they take care of.
In recent years, the healthcare industry has seen a significant decline in the quality of patient care it provides. This has been the result of reduced staffing levels, overworked nurses, and an extremely high nurse to patient ratio. The importance of nurse staffing in hospital settings is an issue of great controversy. Too much staff results in costs that are too great for the facility to bear, but too little staffing results in patient care that is greatly hindered. Moreover, the shaky economy has led to widespread budget cuts; this, combined with the financial pressures associated with Medicare and private insurance companies have forced facilities to make due with fewer
Nurses are crucial in providing quality care in the health care industry. It is imperative to maintain the proper staffing ratio to ensure that nurses can maintain high quality care for their patients. Studies have shown that the increasing workload of nurses can be linked to increased patient deaths, medical errors, hospital-acquired infections, longer hospital stays, and many other complications. (National Nurses United n.d. ) Leaders and managers play a vital role in developing
The broad research problem leading to this study is the belief that nursing shortage in facilities leads to patient safety issues. The review of available literature on this topic shows strong evidence that lower nurse staffing levels in hospitals are associated with worse patient outcomes. Some of these outcomes include very high patient to nurse ratio, fatigue for nurses leading to costly medical mistakes, social environment, nursing staff attrition from the most affected facilities. The study specifically attempts to find a way to understand how nurse
Staffing deficits pose a direct threat of manifesting negative outcomes associated with the delivery of patient care. Anything or anyone that compromises patient care should be eradicated immediately. This author believes that staffing deficits remain a consistent issue due to lack of solutions that actively address the issue. This author believes that inadequate staffing is a major concern due to the degree of harm it can impose on patients. Adverse events associated with