Nurses across the globe are saving multiple lives daily. They work hard to take care of various patients with an array of different health problems. They are accountable for not only caring for the patient’s health but also being empathetic and friendly with all visitors. Exactly how many patients is a nurse responsible for keeping safe, comfortable, and alive? It is difficult to say because the nurse to patient ratio policies varies immensely across state borders. The nursing staffing ratio is a policy that is very important yet is has been neglected for years. It is a policy that is not often considered as vital to patient survival but the policy is a straight contributor to the success of a hospital. Nurses are the backbone of a health care facility, yet they are overworked constantly. Some states do regulate how many patients a nurse is able to care for at one time; however, other states, such as Arizona, do not have any formal manner of regulating the nurse/patient staffing ratios. Their nurses could get a large number of patients assigned to them all at once and there is no policy protecting them from an overload of patients. This lack of structure is putting the lives of patients at …show more content…
In states like Arizona, nurses do not have a limit to a number of patients that can be assigned to a single person. According to the Arizona Scope of Practice Edition 28, “The Arizona Nurse Practice Act and the Arizona Board of Nursing does not have the authority to regulate healthcare facilities or mandate specific nurse/patient staffing ratios”. It is dangerous to have this policy so loosely interpreted. Assigning just one more patient to a nurse’s workload increases the chances of the patient dying by 7%(Sermeus, 2016). The textbook states that this is occurring because the administrators do not have much regard for the safety of patients and nurses alike but instead worry more about the saving
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.
The problem, as defined for my argument research paper, is that to cut costs, hospitals have been steadily increasing the number of patients nurses must care for. In many areas it's not uncommon for one nurse to have to assess, give medications to, and manage the care of as many as 12 patients. This puts tremendous strain on nurses. Many of the studies I have seen in my research indicate that a high ration of patients to nurses increases the rate of death or other poor outcomes for patients. It also leads to increased nurse burnout and higher turnover, though at this point I believe my paper will focus on patient outcomes.
Many nurses face the issue of understaffing and having too much of a workload during one shift. When a unit is understaffed not only do the nurses get burnt out, but the patients also don’t receive the care they deserve. The nurse-patient ratio is an aspect that gets overlooked in many facilities that could lead to possible devastating errors. Nurse- patient ratio issues have been a widely studied topic and recently new changes have been made to improve the problem.
Our medical facilities are great places when they follow guidelines to promote healthy living and great patient care. Its one thing to say that your following them but another to actually implement them. It makes the living environment for the patients much better. To receive the best care possible the Patient to Nurse ratio must be taken into affect immediately. Patients will not receive the adequate care they need until then. Personally knowing the ends and out of what goes on in a medical facility this law is the best thing for all facilities. The patients benefit the best from it as well as the nurses. Nurses no longer will be burning themselves out. If you want things to change you have to help make a change.
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.
Refraining from blame being placed on nurses in regards to lapses in patient care, hospital administrators should ensure the safety of patients by examination of how health care is provided within the facility in relationship to changing nurses working conditions in an effort to allow safe care to patients. With inadequate nurse staffing in connections to unrealistic work loads contributes to unnecessary burden on nursing staff, reducing the quality of care that nurses can provide. Appropriate nurse staffing level are essential to optimizing quality of care and patient outcomes in this era of value-based
A nurse job goes far beyond performing physical assessments, giving medications, and entering patient findings and health information in a computer. Their responsibility of promoting the wellbeing involves many more aspects of care that seem to be ignored often. As a nursing student doing my clinical practicum, I have noticed that the patient-nurse ratio is one of the main reasons why nursing care today is not as perfect as it is expected to be. Such ratio forces nurses to give less priority to certain details of patient care that when frequently evaded can result in negative outcomes.
This type of staffing is usually looked at three times per day, it pairs nurse to patients based on a ratio. A unit that staffs 1:5 means one nurse for each five patients. This model prevents uneven team numbers but does not take into consideration patient acuity. For example, one nurse may have three critically ill patients in their team of five, whereas, another nurse may have five intermediate level of care patients. While each nurse has the same number of patients, the teams are unequal in terms of acuity. In this scenario, one nurse definitely has a larger workload which makes stress levels
The issue and need for mandated nurse to patient ratio doesn’t exist just within the borders of the U.S. Other countries such as China, India, and Australia have all done research as to whether or not they should have mandated staff guidelines. “Hospitals with nurse staffing below target levels were associated with increased mortality, reinforcing the need to match staffing with actual patients’ needs” (Yu, Ma, Sun, Lu, Xu 2015). In China a survey was done to assess their nurses and the different factors that influence care and fatigue in health care settings. “A survey of 9688 nurses and 5786 patients in 181 Chinese hospitals found that higher patient-to-nurse ratios were associated with poorer nurse outcomes (e.g. burnout, job dissatisfaction, low nurse ratings for patient care)” (Yu, Ma, Sun, Lu, Xu
Staffing methods can play a large role in risk management. For instance, if there is not enough staff to take care of patients, it can be a very dangerous situation. The nurse will not be able to give the type of patient-centered care that each deserves. There is an increased for medical errors when the unit is understaffed and the nurses are overwhelmed. If the unit is overstaffed with nurses, it can be an issue too. However this issue involves finances. It can cause a negative variance in the budget. According to Yoder-Wise (2014), “Nurse managers must make skilled staffing and scheduling decisions to ensure that safe and cost effective care is provided by the appropriate level of caregiver” (p. 275).
It surprises me that only one state has enacted nurse patient ratios. Nurse to patient ratios are so important in patient safety as well as adequate staffing. It is hard to staff adequately with the nursing shortage that we have in our country. I know that in our hospital many staff are floated to other units. Liability could be lowered by only floating seasoned nurses to other floors. Seasoned staff some times are still uncomfortable floating to other floors but at least they are not new to being a nurse and new to that unit. Another way to reduce liability and to increase patient safety is to have a charge nurse or seasoned core staff member available to staff members to answer questions and assist with procedures. I work in the float pool
Hi Kimberly, I liked reading your post. I believe that our country has a lot of work to go to solve the inadequacy of nurse to patient ratios. Look at the Marquette strike; that’s not far from us. Again they were unhappy about the hospital’s refusal to guarantee minimum nurse staffing ratio so they could protect patient safety. I believe that having these conditions causes nurses to leave the profession because of emotion and physical stress. My mother a nurse and she stated she could never work in a hospitals setting due to the demand of work load and stress you endure. She currently works in an outpatient setting due PD nursing. For the question for how the nurse managers can help create an environment where nurses feel more comfortable
In the nursing world, situations and environmental factors can negatively affect patient outcomes. This nurse feels that errors mostly occur when staff is overworks and understaffed. When a nurse is in a hurry and there is no one to help out, errors occur. Another cause for a delay in treatment would be nursing high turnover rate. With high turn over rates come inexperienced nurses related to that specific unit.
Nursing staff shortage is expected to get worse. By the year 2020, the nurse staffing deficit is expected to rise to 525,000 by the year 2022. The rise is attributed to retirement of baby boomers and the rise in need for health care (AACN, 2014). Nursing shortage has negative impact on the public. A study done in 2011 showed a 6% rise in mortality rate in institutions that had nursing shortage compare to fully staffed units (AACN, 2014). In a different study, the patient readmission rate increased when a registered nurse was allocated to care for more than 4 patients (AACN, 2014).
There are a number of hazards in this case that deals with staffing, communication, and the hospital policies. Other contributing factors were the vital signs were not monitored properly on the patient and the patient did not receive oxygen or ECG monitoring after surgery. When the pulse oximeter started to alarm, the patient was not assessed. A complete review of the department’s staffing protocol, communication system, management style, and policy needs to be assessed for failures in the system. A manager was not mentioned in the incident and that is a major problem. The manager of the ED department should be available to assess the nurse patient ratio and monitor the department at all times.