The main problem is that nurse staffing ration is affecting patient's safety. Since there is no Nurse Technicians and not enough nurses, there is so much to do and not enough resources to help me. One of my patients is complaining of severe abdominal pain and the physician is angry with me because I wasn't able to bring the equipment to her. One of the actions I would do speak to the physician and explain to her that charge nurse is currently taking care of a serious patient. In addition, I will let her know that a patient who just had surgery is experiencing severe pain and I need to check on him first. The physician needs to understand that there are not enough nurses on this shift. I will also tell her that I will help her after I check…
Improving the quality of care and patient safety is the top priority of every hospital.…
When nurses are forced to work with high nurse to patient ratios, patients can develop a variety of infections, get injured, and can lead to death. Often at times patients are discharged home too soon without adequate education about how to manage their illness or injury (Raquel & Sean, 2011). Because of patients being discharged to soon, this causes them to return back to the hospital often sicker than they were before. Increase in rate of admissions, transfers, and discharges on hospital unit’s raises nurses’ workload. When nurses have fewer patients, they are able to provide high quality care (Raquel & Sean, 2011). A quantitative research was done based on knowledge of unit’s attribute and shift by shift nurse staffing levels. The researchers inspected 43 units of medical and surgical patient’s mortality in an infamous magnet hospital here in United States. The units and shifts staffing data from 2003 to 2006 were obtained and consolidated with patient data resulting in 3.2 million unit shifts for 197961 patients. The outcome of two staffing variables were scrutinize using a shift unit level: understaffing actual registered nurses staffing eight hours or more below target staffing levels generated by a patient classification system and high turnover which means unit admissions, transfers and discharges exceeds mean day shift by one standard deviation. Patient survival rate was analyzed using Cox proportional hazard regression models with adjustment for clients, unit and shifts risk covariates was practiced. The risk adjust mortality was evaluated to staffing and turnover within the first 5 to 30 days after admission and during previous shifts. The result was dangerous ratios (Raquel & Sean, 2011).…
Spetz, J. (2007). California nurse staffing ratios. In D. J. Mason, J. K. Leavitt & M.W. Chaffee (Eds.), Policy & politics in nursing and health care (pp.518-527). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Inc.…
* Recently, I read the article, "Why Emotions Matter: Age, Agitation, and Burnout Among Registered Nurses"...…
The health care industry is a multi-million dollar industry. Health insurance, providers, technology management, and inpatient and outpatient procedures are among the many terms that we hear nowadays within this industry. The principal phrase that seems to be ringing in the ears of the government and policymakers are debt and cost-control. There are fundamental concepts that should be understood throughout the health care industry as it relates to finance. On one hand, many individuals have a general knowledge concerning health care organizations from the standpoint of insurance, copays, and deductibles. These constructs are more familiar to a person that has any health care needs due to the routine of having to provide some form of payment…
Summary: This article informs the reader of the shortage of nurses. The article mentions, as in the past, nurses are still putting in long hours, caring for more patients, desperately trying to stay on top of things. There is a new nursing shortage, different from the old one. The reasons of the shortage are examined. Fewer people are entering the nursing field, a general dissatisfaction of many issues, and a high burnout rate. The article consists of three main reasons for the shortage, each of which go into detail about a certain issue. The new shortage requires unique solutions that will fix the underlying issues, not just solutions that will help in the short run. The solutions of which that were mentioned was needing stronger, professional work environment, adequate staffing, and salaries and benefits to that equal of their responsibilities. To help combat the shortage, federal and state governments are presenting legislation to improve the working environment and helping to pay nursing tuition. Besides government help, there is a personal effort that can be made. The nurses can take better care of themselves, bring suggestions to colleagues and nurse-manager, and raise their personal level of expertise of their…
References: American Nurses Association. (2011, December 20). Nurse staffing plans & ratios. Nursing World. Retrieved from http://nursingworld.org…
I chose nursing as my profession because of my mother and other factors. My mother was an influence because early this year she was in the hospital for two weeks and during that period I only saw the doctor thrice. The nurses where the ones doing everything, so I felt they were the ones who nursed her back to health. The other deciding factors were: variety of places for jobs whether in the public, private, or community setting; the opportunity to learn new things since no day is ever the same; the opportunity to work with other health professionals; nurses will always be needed; nursing offers specialty areas, and the opportunity to be a traveling nursing.…
According to the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), the growing shortage of nurses in America 's hospitals is putting patient lives in danger and requires immediate attention. "The current nursing shortage threatens to heavily impact our citizens ' health and our nations ' security preparedness". (Person, 2003) The nursing shortage that is sweeping across the United States has been upgraded from a health crisis to a national security concern. A recent study in Pennsylvania found that surgical patients in hospitals with high patient-to-nurse ratios experience higher rates of mortality and deaths following complications. Nurses working in these establishments tend to experience…
It related with job burnout. According to Aiken, Clarke and Sloane (2002), if there are any unrealistic workloads, it would lead to the shortage of hospital.In addition, it shows forty percent of nurses had job burnout problem and it exceeds the norms of healthcare workers. Some people may argue that nurse just need to take care patient, and it is easy work. In fact, nurses are not only take care patient, but also do some administrative work. Addintionally, nurses are not take care one patient only, they need to take more than one patient at the same time. The statistic shows that nurse-to-patient ratios in public hospital is 1:12. It is higher than other country (Hong Kong Government News, 2013). Nurese also as a bridge of doctor and patient’s family, as patient’s family do not have many chance to see the doctor and nurses need to communicate with patient’s family. It is busy for nurses when visit time. Moreover, nurses face the shortage problem of nurses, thus the workload become…
The nursing profession, and nursing care of patients are a critical part of positive patient outcomes. Nurses are the face of healthcare today and are the link to health and personal care and continued improvement in patient care. The points of this study bring out the need and correlation for quality and sufficient staffing. The need, desire and demand is there to increase patient outcomes and in order to do this we need to start with sufficient staffing on our nursing units. This will then increase nursing satisfaction, decrease the nursing workload and allow for more individual…
The familiar phrase of overworked and under appreciated has rang through the nursing field. As health care reform and insurances make critical changes, nurses are forced to keep up. Nursing managers are in a bind to meet the new budget cuts and criteria set forth by these changes, which includes higher patient to nurse ratios. Low staffing can lead to nurse burnout, job dissatisfaction and poor staff retention (International Journal of Nursing Practice, 2014). This article will outline some issues at hand with unsafe staffing ratios and the legislative actions regarding this matter.…
Imagine being admitted into the hospital with a serious illness and knowing that you may not get the proper care that you need and desire because the nursing staff is short. That could be very dangerous depending on what’s going on with your health. Nurses have always been a huge part of the medical field because of the diversity of the occupation. Patients rely on the care of nurses while healing/recovering and when that care can’t be given, there is a big problem. The shortage of nurses in the twenty-first century will greatly impact the well being and outcome of patients.…
In the United States, Registered Nurses (R.N.) make up the largest recorded working population of the health care profession, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 2.7 percent of the workforce comprises of nurses compared to 3.6 percent in the last 6 years (A.A.C.N., 2013). This decrease is attributed to the current shortage and high turnover of nurses. This current trend in the nursing profession has a great effect on the provision of health care because it has reduced the quality of care of patients, increased accidents amongst patients, absenteeism rates and staffing among others.…