Staffing Injuries in Nursing Homes

Team A reviewed the four papers that accounted for each team members' week one paper and unanimously chose Rachael's paper on injuries that occur on the job in Nursing Homes. In the original article that Rachael's paper was written about, it clearly states research has been done supporting the fact that injuries are occurring more often as a direct link to reductions in nursing staff hours. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is a significant increase in numerous reported categories of injuries between the 2003 report and 2004 report. Columns of new data were added to the 2004 report and instead of reporting injuries per thousand (as they did in the 2003 report) the 2004 report shows the data as per 10,000 full time workers.
The primary sources of data can be defined as "sources that contain raw, original, uninterpreted and unevaluated information"(Diablo Valley College, 2006). When using this definition for primary data, team A would interpret that the Bureau of Labor statistics is an excellent first data source for primary data. Another site that team A will use for primary data is the Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration (OSHA) which is another government agency that reports raw data in terms of on the job injuries. When considering what secondary data to use, team A considered the following definition of secondary data: "Sources that digest, analyze, evaluate and interpret the information contained within the primary sources. They tend to be argumentative and often come in scholarly periodicals or books" (Diablo Valley College, 2006). The article that the original paper was based upon has interpretations of raw data from the bureau of labor statistics in it, so this bolstered our theory about primary and secondary data. Team A will utilize that article as well as other books listed throughout the paper as our secondary data, such as "The Epidemic of Heath Care Worker Injury" by William Charnay and Guy Fragala, written in 1998. This... [continues]

Read full essay