understaffed & overworked

1796 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The effects of nurse to patient ratio

Understaffed & Overworked

You arrive to work by seven and you’re only given an hour and thirty minutes to make sure the needs of over fifteen people are met. How do you decide who receives a bath before breakfast and who has to wait? Are you being neglectful for deciding one over another? Due to the economic downfall and the increased demands of works needed in medical field, many medical facilities have cut their staffing to balance cost in budgets. Patients can no longer be given full care because of the lack staffing. This has made many people change their minds about becoming nurses. Job openings are posted daily for nurses due to many quitting because of the burnout from over working. In order for the work load to be better for the nursing staff a law must be put in place that requires that nurses will not receive a high number of patients to be all cared for at one time.

Nurses began as private care workers. They normally worked in the home setting with one patient at a time (John M. Welton). Nurses set their own hours as well as pay. At that time, nurses were dedicated to only one patient, therefore they could see to the success of the patient receiving adequate care. Proceeding, World War I, hospitals became more popular. The nurses in the hospital setting were students who worked for free. The cost for patients to be in the hospital at that time was similar to the price of a motel rooms. After World War II, technology became more advance and hospitals were able to offer more services than a private pay nurse (John M. Welton). More specialized heath care was introduced such as the intensive care and cardiac unit (John M. Welton). More technology was purchased to help bring the level of care to a new height. With all ...

... middle of paper ...

... receive great care until a change is made. The facilities may fine having staffing at a minimum as a great profit but it looses in so many other areas.
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.

Show More
Related

  • Nurse Shortage in America

    2249 Words  | 5 Pages

    The nursing shortage is divided into four different categories. The four categories are as follows; "willing nurse" shortage, funding or perceived funding shortage, shortage of understanding that nurses are needed to deliver care, and nurse education and empowerment shortages (What is the nursing shortage and why does it exist?., 18 October, 2007). To be able to repair this major problem, all four segments of shortages need to be addressed. The first nursing shortage, A "willing nurse" shortage, is the simple fact of not enough supply to fill the demand of nursing positions. This shortage occurs either because there are simply not enough nurses to fill the open positions, or because experienced nurses are opting out of nursing and the willingness to provide care due to the current occupational environment. The second nursing shortage is the funding or perceived funding shortage. This shortage is merely due to nurses not feeling as if they are being compensat...

    Read More

  • Florence Nightingale and Registered Nurses

    644 Words  | 2 Pages

    Registered nurses came through a long way back to the 19th century, when they used to provide care to the injured soldiers and other injures strangers. Florence Nightingale was the first influenced in this career. She was a daughter of a British family who worked her life to improve the field of nursing. Her main goal was to spread this field throughout the countries. As a success the first school was in the United States, in Boston. Then later it was passed to New York and others states. In today’s society we are still acknowledge to her great work. And improve the medical field for a better upgrade towards today’s society and generation.

    Read More

  • The American Nurses Association Case Study

    1601 Words  | 4 Pages

    The nursing profession is at the forefront of healthcare, and is gaining more influence and opportunities because of the professional organizations and passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. However, not all practice areas of nursing are seeing benefits in the terms of growth when it comes to staffing issue, such as renal nursing. It is in

    Read More

  • The Nurse-Patient Ratio and Patient Safety

    1326 Words  | 3 Pages

    On April 17th 2013, Senator Barbara Boxer (California) introduced a federal bill that is aimed to reduce nursing shortages by establishing a minimum nurse-to-patient ration in hospitals. She is also ordering whistleblowing protection for nurses who report quality-of-care violations. The law requires that every hospital implement a written hospital-wide staffing plan that will guide the assignments to...

    Read More

  • The Nursing Shortage

    2000 Words  | 4 Pages

    The nursing shortage most likely does not mean a great deal to people until they are in the care of a nurse. The United States is in a severe nursing shortage with no relief in sight due to many factors compounding the problem and resulting in compromised patient care and nurse burnout. Nursing shortages have been experienced in the past by the United States and have been overcome with team effort. However, the current shortage is proving to be the most complex and great strides are being made to defeat the crisis before it becomes too difficult to change. Researchers anticipate that by 2010, the United States will need almost one million more registered nurses than will be available (Cherry & Jacob, 2005, p. 30).

    Read More

  • The Ethical Issues Of Staffing Shortage In Nursing

    600 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Staffing In Nursing Essay

    885 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Nursing Shortage

    1904 Words  | 4 Pages

    Since the 1990’s, the interest in nursing and the profession as a whole has decreased dramatically and is still expected to do so over the next 10-15 years according to some researchers. With this nursing shortage, many factors are affected. Organizations have to face challenges of low staffing, higher costs for resources, recruiting and reserving of registered nurses, among liability issues as well. Some of the main issues arising from this nurse shortage are the impact of quality and continuity of care, organizational costs, the effect it has on nursing staff, and etc. However, this not only affects an organization and community, but affects the nurses the same. Nurses are becoming overwhelmed and are questioning the quality of care that each patient deserves. This shortage is not an issue that is to be taken lightly. The repercussions that are faced by both nurses and the organization are critical. Therefore, state funding should be implemented to private hospitals in order to resolve the shortage of nurses. State funds will therefore, relieve the overwhelming burdens on the staff, provide a safe and stress free environment for the patient, and allow appropriate funds needed to keep the facility and organization operational.

    Read More

  • Essay On Nursing Shortage

    932 Words  | 2 Pages

    The prolonged shortage of skilled nursing personnel has been a serious concern to the healthcare industry, and this shortage has impacted the quality of care delivery. In addition, nursing turnover has also exacerbated the problem of nursing shortage. Nursing shortage has been blamed on many nurses retiring and less younger nurses joining the occupation. There is also an increase in life expectancy (baby boomers) leading an increase in both physical and mental ailment with subsequent demand in nursing care. Nurses are also leaving nursing profession because of inadequate staffing, tense work environment, negative press about the profession, and inflexible work schedules. Even though nursing is a promising career and offers job security, the

    Read More

  • Nursing: A Career Of A Registered Nurse

    881 Words  | 2 Pages

    Nursing originally derived from the medieval era when nuns exercised their assistance to medical practitioners for injured Christian Warriors. The basics of nursing education were outlined by Florence Nightingale during the arrival of the Crimean War. In great detail she wrote a book entitled “Notes on Nursing” that explained the duties and subjections of a nurse. Nursing was then considered for the first time a professional job because particular training and education was needed to fulfill the duties. Many physicians recognized the significance of nursing and instructed a course for people who aspired to be potential nurse. During the Civil War the demand for nurses became a great need for the massive number of injured veterans. Nurse Registration Acts was passed and in 1903 North Carolina was the first state to grasp the Nursing Licensure Act. Nursing has expanded tremendously into its own individual categories such as Registered Nurses (RNs), Nurse Practitioners (NPs), and Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), etc. Nursing continues to evolve over...

    Read More

  • Nursing Shortage Solution Essay

    1249 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Career Of Registered Nursing

    1238 Words  | 3 Pages

    Registered Nursing dates back to the medieval times. Although the modern ideas of nursing didn’t come about till the nineteenth century. Florence Nightingale had a strong impact on the nursing world, she dedicated her life to begin army hospital during the Crimean War. These ideas weren’t put into practice though until the Civil War. During this time the nurses were not licensed but were concerned individuals who volunteered rather than being hired. The first school of nursing was in Boston, Massachusetts in 1873. It wasn’t until 1938 that New York passed the law that practical nurses had to be licensed. There have been many changes since registered nursing had taken place. Today’s nurses are highly educated and are licensed health ca...

    Read More

  • Challenges of Health Care and the Aging Population

    1317 Words  | 3 Pages

    One of the issues involving health care and the aging population is majority of health profession employees being a percentage of the aging population. With the knowledge of health profession employees being a factor in the aging population puts a strain on doctors and nurses that come into the workforce after ones have retired. The fewer employees there are, the greater the work load will become on one person. It is imperative for each nurse in a unit to have four patients maximum. Giving more responsibility to one employee does not make the situation less of a challenge, it more so puts people’s lives at a greater risk of danger. The new demands placed on the health care system for health services will not only include a need for more workers, but also require changes in the way services are provided.

    Read More

  • Analysis of The Evolution of Nursing

    1459 Words  | 3 Pages

    During the Civil War they really worked towards building more hospitals and it drove the nursing profession to grow and have a large demand for nurses, but they were more like volunteers, such as wives or mistresses who were following their soldier men. Being a war nursing at that time was seen as a job for the lower class and no “respectable” woman could be seen in a military hospital. During the Civil War Phoebe Levy Pember, a young widow, went north to the confederate capital of Richmond. She eventually ran the world’s largest hospital, where on an average day she would supervise the treatment of 15,000 patients who were cared for by nearly 300 slave women. The war then led to a greater respect for nurses which was noticed by Congress. They then passed a bill providing pensions to Civil War nurses, but more importantly this led to the profe...

    Read More

  • Linda Richards's Role In The Growth Of Nursing As A Career

    837 Words  | 2 Pages

    Nurses had to work sixteen hour shifts, but even if they were off the patients were still their responsibility, it was a twenty-four hour job. The nurses would receive little to no education about medication or symptoms and how to make those specific connections to help with the underlying problem the patient is having. Even though they did not understand these aspects they still had to take care of the patient. Another problem the hospitals had was the fact that physician orders and nurses’ reports were not properly recorded, they were completely verbal which caused a great deal of miscommunications and confusion (Hanink, n.d.). After graduating Linda began working at New York’s Bellevue Hospital Training School, where is took it upon herself to change how nurses’ reports were being taken and started writing it down. Certain physicians adored and supported the idea of writing down the nurses’ report and pushed it to be a standard practice within health care, which was later adopted across the U.S and England (Hanink, n.d.). She later became the superintendent of Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital’s training school. Through the nursing program she was able to establish the proper training nurses should have as well as how nursing staff worked with one another using delegation, so no nurse would have to endure full responsibilities for twenty-four hours a day (Hanink, n.d.). After a few years, Linda traveled to Japan on a missionary trip and ended up establishing their first nursing training school. She was also responsible for multiple training school in the U.S. because she wanted to change how nurses were being trained (Hanink, n.d.). After creating numerous training schools she became the first president of the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools. This organization was used to standardize the curriculum that was being used in nurse training

    Read More

More about understaffed & overworked

Open Document