Short Staffing Essay

State-mandated nurse-to-patient ratios remains a controversial topic in healthcare. Sufficient nurse staffing is key to ensure adequate patient care, while scarce staffing effects patients’ safety and puts nurses at risk for burnout. Determining nurse-to-patient ratios in nursing facilities remains a challenge for the nursing profession. There are many factors to consider when determining staffing methods, such as cost, nurses’ satisfaction, patient outcomes and safety. Mandating ratios is one attempt at ensuring nurses’ workloads do not exceed what is needed for adequate patient care and safety.

The idea of shift work is a common one, but for nurses this is not a simple changing of staff during a certain time, change of shift signifies a time of purposeful communication between nurses and patients, in order to promote patient safety and best practices (Caruso, 2007). During this time, there is the possibility for this critical opportunity to relay important information to become disorganized by extraneous information, rather than concentrating on the needs of the patient (Sullivan, 2010). Often the patient is left out of the conversation, and is not a part of the process. Patients and families can play an important role in making sure these transitions in care are safe and effective (AHRQ, 2013).

Our nurses are being over worked and understaffed and no one is saying anything! There are mountains of evidence that show the adverse relationship between subpar nursing care and patient outcomes. Many people work overtime to make that overtime money because the hospital is usually understaffed. But because patient outcomes really depend on nurses to be in tip top shape, I think it is extremely important that hospitals eliminate working overtime. That is why I am asking policy makers to cosponsor the bill S. 1132: the Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act of 2015.

Caused by the constant demands of work and lack of taking breaks, burnout is a challenge in itself and can get even worse if gone untreated. More and more nurses have begun to feel the effects of burnout, raising a dire concern that healthcare workers while taking care of others, must also remember to care for themselves which can, unfortunately, go neglected when the work is so heavily focused on saving the lives of

Moreover, several studies have been conducted to examine the effects of low nurse staffing on patients hospitalization experiences, as well as its effect on nurse careers in the long run. A recent study by Frith, Anderson, Tseng, and Fong (2012) to explore the relationship between nurse staffing and medication errors, demonstrated that medication errors were higher in a cardiac care unit and non-cardiac care unit when staffing levels were lower. In addition, Frith et al. (2012) pointed out that medication errors increase by 18% for every 20% decrease in nurse staffing below the average due to failure to follow medication administration protocol As mentioned earlier, nurses perform the last and the most important step of medication administration. Thus, having adequate time to assess each patient efficiently and following the medication rights is critical to provide safe patient care and prevent errors.

( You, Aiken, Sloane, Liu, He, Hu,& et al. ,2013). Another studies revealed the effects of burnout on quality of nursing care. One study show that the higher the burnout level among critical care nurse the poor quality care provided which

Due to hospital care reaching an all-time high in America, we need nurses now more than ever before. Currently in America, we have an issue with nurses having too many paperwork to fill out. In the article “We Need More Nurses” by Alexandra Robbins argues we need more nurses in the hospital. Nursing shortage has been a common issue throughout the world. Because of this issue others are being affected in many different ways.

Nurses play an essential role in the healthcare industry. The nurse workforce is made up of licensed nurses: registered nurses (RNs), licensed vocational nurses (LVNs) and licensed practical nurses (LPNs), along with nurse aides. Registered nurses are responsible for assessments of patients’ needs, development of care plans, medication administration, and treatments, while licensed vocational nurses perform specific care under the delegation of the registered nurses and supervisions. Nursing aides perform activities of daily living (unskilled attention) to the patient. Adequate nursing staffing is essential to both patient care and outcomes, also to the retention of nurses while inadequate staffing creates problems for both the patients and

Understaffing in hospitals is a major problem that has been affecting healthcare workers and patients for many years. I have chosen to highlight understaffing as a patient safety issue because of the consequences that can arise from it. Shortages in staffing can result in an increase of infection rates (Stone et al., 2007) leading to complications and poorer patient outcomes (Needleman et al. 2002). This particular issue is of interest to me because I have experienced and witnessed it myself. As a midwifery student in a busy maternity hospital, I can appreciate the hard work and dedication each midwife gives to their patients.

The importance of staff retention Nurse retention is to provide staff with implements that will empower them in the workplace. Empowerment in organizational structures include power and opportunity. Employees with high levels of power are included in lines of information, support, resources and opportunities to learn and grow (Schwinger ET AL., 2010). In additional employees who have high levels of opportunity in their jobs tend to be more proactive problem solvers and accept change. When staff have opportunity and power, they are motivated, feel more in control, have increased wellbeing and have greater job satisfaction (Schwinger ET AL., 2010).

This is important evidence because it gives us conditions and results of what can happen if patients get lower quality care. Patients’ are not having enough time getting checked up by a nurse, and nurses would miss some diagnostics. Patients are getting sick because of the poor care they are receiving from nurses. The care patients can get is affected by a nurse shortage, “Nursing workload definitely affects the time that a nurse can allot to various tasks. Under a heavy workload, nurses may not have sufficient time to perform tasks that can have a direct effect on patient safety.

In less acute circumstances, long term outcome of understaffing can also be detrimental to patient condition. Often, when a staff member is overwhelmed with the workload, nursing actions which are perceived less critical may be pushed to the back burner. Debilitated patients may not be turned and repositioned resulting in hospital acquired pressure ulcers, which not only affects patient outcome, but also taxes the hospital

Large patient loads combined with a stressful work environment affects nurses’ abilities to provide quality healthcare. Patient safety should never be compromised. It is our responsibility to learn from research and improve our current nurse staffing ratios. Nurse staffing is key and affects all other outcomes. Without nurses administering the right treatment at the right time to the right patients, all other healthcare interventions are not effective.

It is important to identify why nurses are becoming stressed and how to reduce work related stress. The past 10 years there has been an increase in stress levels for nursing staff. In 2001 a survey was conducted by “American Nurses Association”. The study results showed that 70.5% of nurses cited the acute and chronic effects of stress and overwork among their top three health and safety

Nurses fatigue is growing problem nurse face each day in the healthcare environment, and he can be caused by long hours, sleep deprivation, and possibly by accepting extra assignments can be dangerous for both nurses and patient. These inadequacies can result in major implications for the health and safety of registered nurses and can compromise patient care which can lead to fatalities. (American Nurses Association, 2014). In my experience, being fatigued from working much 12-hour shifts consecutively was very difficult as I felt extremely tired, resulting in lack of focus, missing important details during the handing over the process with impaired cognitive functioning. This I found was detrimental to the patients and myself as it impedes quality and has a deleterious effect on patient safety.