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Staffing ratios nursing essay
Nurse staffing ratio and patient outcomes
Importance of adequate staffing for nurses
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In conclusion, the staffing matrix provides a balance between the patient care needs and staff qualifications. Relying on an evidence-based approach, the acuity-based matrix system schedules, matches and assigns nurses to cases where their skills are need most as the top priority (Yoder, 2013). Additionally, the system allows improvement in operational consistency and continuity of care. Employing new nursing staff using the new acuity based staffing matrix eliminates guesswork and improves patient outcomes. According to studies released by the American Nurses Association, “appropriate nurse staffing helps to achieve clinical and economic improvements in patient care” (ANA, 2016). Moreover, the ANA (2016) outlined positive patient outcomes
In society we are surrounded by images, immersed in a visual world with symbols and meaning created through traditional literary devices, but augmented with the influence of graphics, words, positioning and colour. The images of Peter Goldsworthy’s novel, Maestro (1989) move within these diameters and in many ways the visions of Ivan Sen’s film Beneath Clouds (2002) linger in the same way. Both these texts explore themes of appearance versus reality and influence of setting, by evoking emotion in the responder through their distinctively visual elements.
This article is a comprehensive look at staffing on hospital units. It used a survey to look at characteristics of how the units were staffed – not just ratio, but the experience and education level of the nurses. It evaluated several different categories of hospital facilities – public versus private, academic medical centers versus HMO-affiliated medical centers, and city versus rural. It is a good source because it shows what some of the staffing levels were before the status quo of the ratio legislation passed in California. It’s main limitation as a source is that it doesn’t supply any information about patient outcomes.
Without participating in a longitudinal study, it is difficult to truly assess the efficacy in mandating nurse staffing ratios. It is difficult to measure the benefits of mandated staffing due to numerous confounding variables. These confounding variables include the resources available at specific hospitals in addition to the populations that they serve. Hospital volume, RN job satisfaction and the relationship between physicians and nurses have also been shown to affect patient outcomes (Duval et al., 2007).
Do you ever want to hit that triple pirouette? Or hold your arabesque for over thirty seconds? In order to do both those things, you need to have great balance. My science fair project demonstrates the effect of sight and balance. My scientific question is: How does changing dancer’s eyesight affect their balance? I will be eliminating sight completely, create tunnel vision, exclude the use of their dominant eye, lower the amount of light, distort their vision, and flash strobe lights above the dancers.
Identifying and maintaining the appropriate number of mixed nursing staff, RN/LPN/CNA, is critical to the delivery of quality patient care. Many studies reveal an association between a higher level of experienced RN staffing and lower rates of adverse patient outcomes (“Nurse staffing plans,” 2013). The nurse-patient ratios will in turn improve the nurses working conditions, decreasing the risk of errors to patients.
In the past two decades, there has been a push for appropriate staff to client ratios. However, measuring client needs and nursing efforts have been around since 1922 (Lewinski-Corwin, 1922, pp. 603-606). The earliest recorded effort was by the New York Academy of Medicine. Superintendents and nurses from ten training schools documented the time spent providing bedside care. From complied information, the researchers revealed each client required an average of five hours and four minutes of care in a 24-hour period. From these observations, they evaluated staffing issues in New York City. At that time, none of the hospitals were sufficiently staffed (Lewinski-Corwin, 1922, pp. 603-606).
These articles have many similarities when discussing the issue of staffing shortages. For patients, their loved ones and the general population, they don’t understand the ramifications and strain that staffing shortages have on nurses. People expect and deserve complete, competent and safe care when they are patients. These articles bring to light all the struggles that nurses have to deal with. Nurses are fearful that they will make mistakes, will harm patients, and will harm themselves. (Bae, 2012; Erlen, 2001; Martin, 2015) Overtime can be overwhelming and exhausting, which can lead to errors being made. (Bae, 2012; Erlen, 2001) These articles perceive that it may be beneficial for nurses, patients, and healthcare facilities to decrease the nurse-to-patient ratio, however, this option is not always
Thousands of nurses throughout the nation are exhausted and overwhelmed due to their heavy workload. The administrators do not staff the units properly; therefore, they give each nurse more patients to care for to compensate for the lack of staff. There are several reasons to why
The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of nursing staffing ratios in the healthcare industry. This has always been a primary issue, and it continues to grow as the population rate increases throughout the years. According to Shakelle (2013), in an early study of 232,432 surgical discharges from several Pennsylvania hospitals, 4,535 patients (2%) died within 30 days of hospitalization. Shakelle (2014) also noted that during the study, there was a difference between 4:1 and 8:1 patient to nurse ratios which translates to approximately 1000 deaths for a group of that size. This issue can be significantly affected in a positive manner by increasing the nurse to patient ratio, which would result in more nurses to spread the work load of the nurses more evenly to provide better coverage and in turn result in better care of patients and a decrease in the mortality rates.
In spite of the shortage among nurses, there are number of options and recommendations that can better help to maintain an adequate staff level and provide greater strategies needed to increase nursing. The choices open to cover for insufficient staff range from reallocating and postponing work, relocating staff within unit or from other units, to employing temporary additional nurses according to Buchan and Seccombe (1995). In health care, some of these options may not be available because ...
Through the research, it demonstrated that nurses are also benefited by an acuity tool. As staffing levels change, it can cause stress for the nurse to the workload. By prioritizing cares, it helps the nursing staff size to balance patient cares based on the quantity of patients and their complexity levels (Andrade et al., 2017). Though a nursing staff may be low on nurses, using an acuity tool assists them to effectively coordinate their cares among the different complexities
Measurement is the methods of assigning numbers according to some rule or convention to aspects of people, jobs, job success or aspects of staffing system. According to staffing, measurement is a process used to assemble and state facts about an individual and jobs in numerical form. Staffing measurement is usually used to conduct performance appraisal which will determine employee’s performance level. Measurements consider as an important tool for staffing process because effective measurements and data analytics can result in a competitive edge. Hence, it is impractical to have any type of systematic staffing process that does not go through measurement process.
The nurse manager presented in the scenario is above all, a nurse who belongs to the group of “professional nurses that experience situations each day in which they must lead, manage, and follow” (Yoder-Wise, 2014, p. 6). The manager as she walks in to her unit, is aware of the fact that “care routines must be managed” (Yoder-Wise, 2014, p. 5). In prioritizing her decisions, the nurse manager would need to sort out which problem or issue has the high urgency and importance. Therefore, “a problem with high urgency and importance rankings should be dealt with first” (NDC, 2007, p. 12). Of the five issues she is faced with, the number one priority to address would be the staffing issue related to the RN who called in. As in any staffing problem, the nurse manager needs to consider not only the patient quality care and
According to the American Nursing Association, staff development specialist must stay abreast to current trends and advancement in healthcare by maintaining current knowledge and compe...
Staffing in health care facilities is a big concern, especially in nursing homes. “Nurse staffing is an important input in the production of high-quality nursing home care.” (Bowblis and Hyer pg. 1). Nursing homes need the proper amount of staffing to meet high quality