Nurse Management: An Overview of Need for Adequate Staffing

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The nurse manager in today’s health care has a solid role in providing a healthy working environment. Healthy working environment is the basis for safe and better patient outcomes. Healthy working environment in a unit depends on the inspiration, motivation and support from the nurse manager and the management in all the ways. So as a nurse manager in a unit, the change I wish to initiate is the safe staffing patterns. Safe staffing patterns are always important for safe working environments to deliver excellent patient care. Staffing and scheduling means providing an adequate staff mix to meet the needs of the patients (Grohar-Murray & Langan, 2011). Nurse manager should know how to schedule and skill mix to provide adequate staffing and better patient care. Skill mix offers information about the appropriate utilization of nurses in terms of workload shared among RNs, LPNs and NAs (CHIN, 2013).
The rationale for the change
Registered nurses are on the front line in all the hospitals for early detection and prompt intervention when patients' conditions deteriorate. So better patient outcomes depend on the number of skilled staff available to take care of the patients. To decrease staff burnout and improve staff satisfaction, adequate staff ratio is needed. Providing consistency of nursing caregivers may significantly improve both health and economic outcomes (Mefford, 2011). When there is an adequate staffing in the unit, it greatly decreases anxiety on the nurses, patients and the families. Adequate staffing can also greatly improve the patient satisfaction levels as well as the confidence level in their nursing caregivers. By safe staffing ratio, nurses get adequate time to take care of the patients which results in...

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...2013). Factors that guide nurse managers regarding the staffing of agency nurses in intensive care units at private hospitals in Pretoria. Curationis, 36(1), 1-10. doi:10.4102/curaionis.v36i1.115
K., Wong, C. A., Grau, A. L., Read, E. A., & M. (2012). The influence of leadership practices and empowerment on Canadian nurse manager outcomes. Journal Of Nursing Management, 20(7), 877-888. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2834.2011.01307.x
Mefford, L. C., & Alligood, M. R. (2011). Evaluating nurse staffing patterns and neonatal intensive care unit outcomes using Levine's conservation model of nursing. Journal Of Nursing Management, 19(8), 998-1011. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2834.2011.01319.x
Robert wood johnson foundation initiative on the future of nt the institute of mursing, medicine. (2010, February 23). Retrieved from http://www.jointcommission.org/assets/1/18/RWJ_Future_of_Nursing.pdf

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