The Pros And Cons Of Mandated Nurse-To-Patient Ratios

Decision makers will need to determine how to best utilize nurses, technicians, and other professionals to close the gap in providing services to patients. Nurses require less time to train, are less expensive to train, cost less to employ, and can increase the efficiency and productivity of physicians who provide care to patients. The increase in the use of health care services as well as the increase in the number of venues where health care is provided has also increased the job opportunities for nurses and other members of the healthcare workforce. The demand for primary care services has stimulated the training of nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and certified nurse

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.

According to Stanton, low-staffed hospitals resulted in higher incidences of poor patient outcomes. Such as, UTIs, pneumonia, and fall. However, poor patient outcomes not only result from short-staffed nurses, but can also result from inadequate nursing assistants as well. NAs play a great role in providing basic daily care of patients. These professionals are very crucial in the healthcare industry but sadly, there are NA shortages.

(Abdulla, Al-Qahtani, & Al-Kuwari, 2011). One study revealed that burnout syndrome is common among critical care nurses, because they work with more critical and traumatic patients burnout syndrome is not only affect the nurse but extend to their quality of care that delivered for their patient.(Moss, Good, Gozal, Kleinpell, & Sessler., 2016). Organizational and environment factors such as excessive workload, staffing shortage, lack of empowerment lead to burnout which compromise nurse’s ability to provide high quality care. ( McHugh, Kutney, Cimiotti, Sloane, & Aiken., 2011). Burnout ,quality of care and patients outcome Different studies have explained the relation between burnout syndrome, stress in work environment ,and patients satisfaction which assessed the quality of nursing care provided, the high quality care the more patient satisfaction.

Introduction Mandatory overtime is a topic most nurses are familiar with. Due to nurse shortages, nurses are often expected to work extra hours in addition to their regular hours. By mandating nurses to work extra hours, it prevents a unit from having to work understaffed and patients will have needs meet. The ill effect of mandating nurses to work overtime greatly outweighs the benefits.

A report by the Agency for Healthcare and Quality in America projected that hospitals involving increased levels of Registered Nurse (RN) staffing showed decreased degrees of substandard patient outcomes and increased nurse staffing ratios were linked with a 2% to 25% decrease in substandard outcomes (Mark & Stanton, 2010). As a result, education on nurse staffing and the influence on quality of patient care warrants evidence based decision on existing and forthcoming practices. The influence of nurse staffing ratios on quality of care has been observed in four studies. Hospitals using decreased levels of nursing staff faced a 7% escalation in 30-day mortality and a 7% escalation in failure-to-rescue.

Nursing shortages are a problem, the patient ratios are too high. If a nurse has too much to handle the quality of care a patient receives is going to

What roles does the nurse play in ensuring the implementation of quality and safety initiatives? The nurse must ensure that all federal guidelines are followed in order to continue to receive funding for the Head Start program. Without these funds Head Start would be unable to continue to operate. Some of the guidelines for funding include quality and safety initiatives that must be followed.

Mandatory overtime is an issue faced by many nurses across the nation. It is seen as a solution to the nursing shortage crisis; however, it is not a sustainable solution as it has led to an increase in medical errors, increased patient mortality, decreased job satisfaction, nurse fatigue, and deficits in nurse’s work performance. Several states have enacted or are considering laws to prohibit this problem. According to Rubenfire, “This is something that's been going on in hospitals for a very long time,” Ruben noted. “But it is not as focused on as much in the past.”

There is a need for greater reimbursement for nurse staffing for health care organizations. Nurses make up the bulk of medical personnel and are the frontline caregivers and health care providers. I agree with many experts’ opinion that adequate nurse staffing results in favorable patient outcomes and must therefore be financially supported. Dunham-Taylor (2015), argues that “effective workforce management is a key factor contributing to organizational success” (Dunham-Taylor, 2015). Moreover, the author asserts that adequate nurse staffing leads to better patient outcomes, better reimbursement, positive patient satisfaction scores, greater workforce satisfaction, increase employee retention, financial success and organizational stability

Without nurses, there would be no well-provided patient care, but without the push to give nurses the appreciation for their undervalued work, they wouldn’t be able to take care of their sick patients. Ultimately, this website carries a powerful argument in the vital roles nurses take on. Mercer University uses mostly a lot of statistics to make an enthralling case on the why the role of nurses is important. The website itself serves as a very reliable resource to any individual looking forward to learning more about the nurse role in the medical field, and to show people in general that numerous nurses are dramatically

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.

Ethical Issues in Nursing: Nurse-Patient Ratios Megan Harvey, Katie McKelvery, Erica Robbins & Cassandra Tingley St. Johns River State College March 2018 Ethical Issues in Nursing: Nurse-Patient Ratios Every day nurses are faced with ethical dilemmas. Challenges in these situations are becoming more and more complex due to increasing workload and sicker patients. When a nursing unit is understaffed not only are nurses more likely to become burnt out, but their patients are far less likely to receive the quality of care they deserve. The problem is that the Federal regulations require hospitals who participate in Medicare to “have ‘adequate’ numbers of licensed nurses (RN, LPN, CNA) to provide care to all patients as needed,” but the regulations

Short staffing is one of the many challenges nurses encounter in the work environment. The impacts can be detrimental primarily to the patient’s outcome. To examine the effects of short staffing, research was conducted on 36,539 hospital inpatients to evaluate the amount of those exposed to an understaffed shift and how many patient outcomes resulted in a NSO (Twigg, Gelder, & Myers, 2015). NSO’s are nurse sensitive outcomes based on the nursing care provided to the patient. Patients exposed to short staffing had an increase of greater than one chance of NSO’s compared to patients not exposed (Twigg et al., 2015).

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.