PATIENT FACTOR: - Some reason for ineffective staffing result due to some patient factor such as the patient type i.e. the diagnosis of the patient, the age of the patient or the sex of the patient. It could be due to the complexity of care been rendered to the patient e.g. semi-conscious patient or a deeply unconscious patient will be demanding more care than a patient who is fully conscious. The duration a patient spends in the hospital also have a major role in affecting effective staffing in allocating staff in the ward, the head nurse have to check the type of patient in the ward.
Nursing Shortage is a problem we all should be aware of. There are many factors that may lead to a nursing shortage, such as having stressful and unsafe working environments, and our nurses are being overworked. This is a problem we should be aware of because it is affecting the patient care. Nurses, would not have enough time to stay with a patient if they have more patients to worry about. Nurses play a big role in our hospitals and communities.
The assumption is that only nurses who work in the hospital setting are subjected to nurse fatigue, but this problem affects in the rehabilitation facilities, home care nursing, specialized clinics. Nurses work long hours to compensate for the shortage of nursing staff within most healthcare facilities. When nurses are tired to the point of exhaustion critical errors can be made that would not normally occur if they were working regular hours. Peplau theory focuses on interpersonal relations between nurses and patients which is valuable in developing interventions for specific care within the clinical
Turnover intentions help to predict if skilled and dependable workers are likely to quit. Jones (1990a, b) defined nursing turnover as process whereby nursing staff leave or transfer within hospital environment. Turnover theorists have suggested that nurses ' decision to leave the hospital results from both a combination and interaction of workplace events, working conditions and psychosocial factors (Moreno-Jiménez et al. 2012). Specifically, they have suggested that it follows progressive steps starting from a condition of job dissatisfaction, gradually progressing in successive steps that increase the likelihood of leaving the workgroup and the hospital (Sheridan & Abelson 1983).
2.0 MATERIALS AND METHODS This was a descriptive, cross-sectional hospital-based study, which was conducted at Mnazi Mmoja Hospital – Zanzibar in different adults wards to assess nurse`s knowledge, practice, as well as challenges faces when caring of critically ill patients. The quantitative approach was used to collect and analyze data from the study participants. The hospital is located in Stone Town, the historic center of Zanzibar City. It serves outpatient services/clinics, specialized clinics, as well as several wards for inpatient services. The hospital attends over 600 outpatients and 71 admissions on daily bases.
There are many instances where hospital staff faces the embarrassment of not finding required assets. It leads to the situation where staff raises a request for purchase of new equipment and assets. Improper asset management damages financial structure of the hospitals – • Paying insurance premiums to Ghost assets – When an asset of high cost is disposed and if it is not recorded properly, and then Hospitals pay to insure premiums to these assets • Poor recording of assets also affects the reputation of hospitals – When hospital employees fail to remove depreciated equipment from the books after it has been disposed of, the hospital appears to be older on paper than it really is. This can be problematic for hospital executives looking to refinance existing debt or raising new capital for expansion • Unrecorded Assets – Hospitals sometimes have equipment that isn't on the books, which is a cause for concern when the hospital is
They collated the information about hospital characteristics from the 1999 American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey and the 1999 Pennsylvania Department of Health Hospital Survey (Aiken et al., 2002). They used a nurse staffing measure to calculate the mean patient load of all staff registered nurse assigned to at least 1, but fewer than 20 patients regardless of the specialty and shift across the entire study hospitals (Aiken et al., 2002). The researchers utilized survey questionnaires in 1999 during the spring season. They mailed the questionnaires to registered nurses randomly, who were on the list of the Pennsylvania Board of Nursing and were a resident of the state (Aiken et al., 2002). The questionnaire consisted of demographic information, current and previous work experience, workload, job satisfaction, and feelings of job-related burnout (Aiken et al., 2002).
For example, when a patient is frustrated and acting out verbally to the staff, it would be necessary to address exactly why these feelings are present. When the nurse spread the word that the patient was more difficult to work with, the oncoming nurse was immediately wary of that patient. While not all nurses will take that kind of information to heart, some will. It will impact the quality of care that the patient deserves because the nurse will more likely spend her time with her other patients, than with the difficult patients. His needs may not be fully met because the nurse wanted to avoid any difficult
1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT Care of critically ill patient in the ward is a challenging process especially in the low resource countries. This is due to deficiency/ inadequate specialized or competent skilled personnels and absence of monitoring of patients closely. As the nurses are in constant contact with patients, they are in prime position to identifying problems at an early stage with the use of systematic patient assessment According to the standard of care, systematic assessment framework is used to assess critically ill patient for rapid assessment of the patient who is deteriorating. and also use early warning tools (EWS) as an observation monitoring tool that alert nurses to normal and abnormal physiological parameters. The ABCDE framework
It is a known fact that nurses are at a disadvantage on so many levels as far as their work environment and compensation are concerned. Unions cannot take care of all of the problems in the work environment but are nurses’ best bargaining chip. The unions have their own legal team that can come to a members’ aid in case there is need. Nursing unions can help negotiate better working conditions for nurses. They can defend nurses against unfair