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Nurse Staffing Ratios and patients
Nursing shortage and staffing issues
Nursing shortage and staffing issues
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In my opinion, federally mandated staffing ratios are necessary until better solutions are found. Even though staffing ratio doesn’t solve nursing shortage, it is the first step to having an organized schedule. Staffing ratio creates an opportunity for charge nurses to create a schedule outline according to a nurse administrator (Kerfoot, 2016). The outline can be used to assign skilled nurses to critical patients. However, the mandated staffing ratio does have its advantages and disadvantages. According to a nursing article, studies have shown that the mandated staffing ratio has reduced fatigue and medical error among nursing staff while promoting patient safety (Votroubek, 2017). The staffing ratio creates an environment where the nurses are not easily burned out. The ratio gives the nurses less patients compared to before. A friend of mine has told me that she has taken care of over 10 patients in the past and she was grateful for the mandated staffing ratio. The mandated staffing ratio has created a better …show more content…
The existence of staffing ratio creates an urgent need for the hospital to hire more nurses. Due to the increased cost, the hospital might not be able to hire more nurses, which could result in nursing shortage. According to an article, the staffing ratio might cause patients to wait longer to be admitted into an unit due to nurses having maximum patients already (Votroubek, 2017). I disagree with medical/surgical staffing ratio in certain cases. Not all nurses have similar skills or experiences (Marquis & Huston, 2017, p. 437). If an experienced nurse is assigned to most of the high acuity patients, it could potentially create a mental strain by following the staffing ratio since the nurse would have to take care of 2 or 3 other low acuity patients at the same time. I personally feel like medical/surgical staffing ratio should be 1:4 to reduce strain on the experienced
Monitoring staff levels is an important factor. Also leveling the flow of patients in and out institutions could help to reduce wide fluctuations in occupancy rates and prevent surges in patient visits that lead to overcrowding, poor handoffs, and delays in care. Studies show that overcrowding in areas such as the emergency rooms lead to adverse outcomes, because physicians and nurses having less time to focus on individual patients. One study found that for each additional patient with heart failure, pneumonia, or myocardial infarction assigned to a nurse, the odds of readmission increased between 6 percent and 9 percent (Hostetter and Klein, 2013). All of which costs the hospital money.
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.
Many nurses, including myself, face the issue of understaffing and having too much of a workload during one shift. Nurses get burnt out more quickly when working on an understaffed unit. The patient also suffers by not receiving the care they deserve. The issue of nurse-patient ratio is a touchy area
Nursing standards are the building blocks that lead to excellent patient care. The ANA (American Nursing Association) has standardized sixteen common practices for the best quality care of patients by nurses. Nurses are only able to facilitate minimal standards to patients due to time restraints derived from patient ratios and lack of support from administration. The hope to achieve the best possible outcomes in patient care are limited to the minimal standards expected of nurses from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (ANA, 2010). Patient ratios have been seen as a huge issue across the realm of nurses and health care facilities in deliverance on patient care. Addressing the issue of nursing shortages and the effects on ...
For my research paper, I will be taking the position that low nurse-patient ratios (the number of patients a nurse is assigned to care for during their shift) are beneficial to patient safety and should be adopted on a larger scale.
The first step is for the hospitals to have a nurse driven staffing committee, which will create staffing plans that reflect that needs of the patient population and match the skills and experience of the staff for each shift. The second approach is for legislators to mandate specific nurse-patient ratios in legislation or regulation. The third approach would be a requiring of facilities to disclose staffing levels to the public and/or a regulatory body.
Needleman, J., Buerhaus, P., PKankratz, V. S., Leibson, C. L., Stevens, S. R., & Harris, M. (2011). Nurse Staffing and Inpateint Hospital Mortality. The New England Journal of Medicine , 364, 1037-1045.
I am glad that you mentioned safe staffing in your post this week as one way that nurses can help facilitate positive change throughout the community. Not only does safe staffing help to save patient lives it also helps to prevent burnout at the nursing level. According to Peate (2015), nurses face major challenges in order to deliver the best possible care with fewer resources that is not only financial but human as well. This creates an environment of overworked nurses who are more than likely letting their health take a backseat. “Individual nurses are going the extra mile to get the job done, yet the damage to their health is real and is happening nationwide” (Peate, 2015, p. 133). There is one particular vivid memory of an example of short staffing that I personally experienced on my floor and although one of my
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
The administrators must reduce the ratio of nurse to patient because the current nurses' workload can lead to nurses' burnout, patient dissatisfaction, and negative patient outcomes.
The specific clinical question regarding the search for a quantitative question is as follows: Will a higher nurse to patient ratio decrease the mortality rate of discharged patients? The intervention of such a method would definitely allow nurses to balance out more time to ensure each patient is properly treated and assist to prevent work overload that leads to slight but very risky errors that lead to death. This would also allow nurses to do more observation and help to educate patients to preform proper movement to assist in recovery and prevent injury while in their care (for example, proper bending, avoid movement that could be harmful post surgery).
...staff would not be required to put in the overtime to compensate for the lack of workers. Patients would no longer have to suffer the neglect of the staff because he or she was too busy. Making sure the patient gets the best quality care reduces the time spent for recovery. Reducing the time spent for recovery increases the organization’s finances. Providing a safe facility also reduces the expenses on the private hospital’s budget. Ensuring a patient is safe can reduce potential use of ongoing treatment and services. Hiring the appropriate nursing staff needed can save the organization money. Instead of cutting back on staff, more staff needs to be hired to fulfil the needs of the patient. In the economy today, private hospitals need to focus on the overall long term effects of each action opposed to quick reactions resulting in financial strain for the facility.
Factors such as, heavy workloads, stress, job dissatisfaction, frequent medical errors, and intention of leaving the job are all common for nurses to experience, especially during the nursing shortage crisis. Not only do the nurses suffer during a shortage, but the patients ' health outcomes suffer even more. For instance, there are higher rates of infectious diseases and adverse patient outcomes, such as urinary tract infections (UTIs), upper gastrointestinal bleeding, shock, pneumonia, prolonged hospital stays, failure to rescue, and mortality. As a result, this leads to higher re-admission rates for patients. Furthermore, high patient-to-nurse ratios cause heavy workloads due to an inadequate supply of nurses, an increased demand for nurses, a reduction in staffing and an increase in overtime, and a shortened length of stay for patients. Without the heavy workloads that nurses have to endure on a daily basis, there would more time for nurses to communicate more effectively with physicians, insurance companies, and patients and their families. Those heavy workloads are the result of hospitals reducing the nursing staff and implementing mandatory overtime policies just to meet unexpectedly high demands. Unfortunately, the nursing shortage has affected nurses ' mental and physical health. For example, the most common health concerns for nurses include cardiovascular health, occupational injuries and illnesses, and emotional and physical exhaustion. Therefore, safe-staffing ratios/levels have to become the main
As reported by Bowron (2010), hospitals will benefit from reducing patient-nurse ratio by saving money. Bowron point out that an adequate staffing ratio could lower hospitals’ costs significantly in the following ways: