Why Staff Nursing Matters
Carmelo Perez
Felician College
Why Nurse Staffing Matters
The Subject of the Article
The article is advocating for ethical considerations in the process of Nurse Staffing in healthcare institutions. The article illustrates why Nurse Staffing must be done with a degree of excellence and by use of evidence that matches the nurses’ skills, proficiencies, and experience against a patient’s medical and safety needs.
Major Themes in the Article
The major themes addressed in this article include: Excellent and Evidence in Nurse Staffing, and a call for action.
Important Points Raised by the Article and Why
The article states that it is unethical for health care institutions to engage in understaffing as well as poor staffing of nurses. This conclusion was reached by the American Nurses Code of Ethics, which is grounded on the premise that it is the nurse’s sole obligation to meet each and every patient’s medical need. Clearly, appropriate nurse staffing is very likely to reverse the trend of death and injuries of patients in the U.S. hospitals. Consequently, safe staff nursing is linked to patient safety and satisfaction.
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Undeniably, the risks that occur as a result of medical errors are transferred to the patient. Furthermore, nurses are also at risk of losing their jobs because they can become the subjects of legal suits, especially when patient injuries and deaths are linked to medical errors. On the contrary, implementation of an effective nurse staffing becomes a remedy that will greatly benefit nursing as a profession.
Implications of Nurse Staffing on Nursing Practice
There is a positive correlation between effective staffing of nurses and the quality of patient care and safety. As discussed earlier, nurses who work in safe and stress-free environments are more likely to keep their jobs, which leads to retention of the highly qualified and experienced registered nurses.
Implications of Nurse Staffing on Health Care in the
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.
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.
Outline ethical issues that impact the APN Ethical issues can impact the health care system in a variety of ways. The APN is expected to provide excellent regardless of the work environment. One issue that continues to influence the entire nursing profession is staffing inadequacies. “Without sufficient staffing it is difficult to meet ethical standards of professional practice responsibilities, including protecting the rights of individual patients and families, alleviation of suffering, and preserving their integrity”(Ulrich et al., 2010, p. 1).
The nursing shortage is one major issue that was presented in chapter 60. According to Mason, researchers predicted the nursing shortage will reach between 300,000 to nearly 1 million nurses by 2030. This issue still persist in today’s workforce due to the high population of the baby boomers retiring and the sudden increase in longevity of geriatric population. As a result, this causes the demand for nursing care to exceed the supply of nurses. In addition to increased demand created by an aging U.S. population, many patients are living with chronic conditions (Mason, Leavitt, & Chaffee, 2016) which further add to the demands.
Stage 1. Description Under the heavy workload of nursing care, accidents are easily to cause. It is avoidable for nurse to reduce the accidents by enhancing the quality of care and be awareness on patient safety. During my practicum, there are some incidents that have not fully aware of patient safety on the nursing practice.
These conditions contribute to the detriment of patient and nurse safety. A nurse who is faced with a high patient ratio and then made to work overtime is prone to errors which can harm themselves and their patients. A scenario that causes fragile patients in need of excellent care to suffer. Nurses are human and require conditions that will enable them to work
Alyssa DeMarco NYIT: Department of Nursing Short-Staffed, Workplace Violence and Mandatory Overtime: An IOM Nursing Issues Paper I view nursing as a process of continuous growth and pursuit of knowledge to provide competent compassionate care. Registered Nursing Professionals try to deliver the highest level of patient care to ensure satisfaction; however, they face many challenges and issues that hinder their ability to properly deliver client care. There are various issues in nursing that needs to be addressed and this paper will focus on three: nursing workforce shortage, nursing violence and mandatory overtime hours. These issues have a direct effect on patient care and this paper aims to discuss the impact they have on the nursing field.
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
The hospitals would need to fix the situation by having staffing standards. The nurses need to be staffed sufficiently to avoid nursing burnout, because when a nurse is burnt out, then the patients will also be affected. The nurses would also need their time off to rest, so that they can function properly in the hospital (Wagner, 2013). Graph 1 In the graph shown above, it shows the percentages of staff who are experiencing emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment.
The nursing world with its strengthening economy and employment growth will create a critical shortage for nurses. Practicing registered nurses encounter short staffing in their workplace. It is a concern for nurses in their profession and personal well-being. There are increasing reports on the exploitation of mandatory overtime as a staffing mechanism. An unsafe staffing practice will result in harmful outcomes on patient care, medication errors, and eventually nurses leaving the bedside or the profession.
Registered nurses are required to deliver wide-range nursing attention and treatment to all persons in a healthcare setup (American Nurses ' Association, 2000). Notably, they have to offer emergency care and guarantee the safe execution of treatment. It is mandatory for nurses to demonstrate a broad knowledge of the laws and regulations that are in line with their profession. Additionally,
Upon implementation of this policy, surveys have shown that nurse retention and patient care have improved in most of the nursing facilities (Aiken et al., 2010). The study found nurses in states with no nurse-to-patient ratio policies burn out more as compared to nurses in California (Aiken et al., 2010). Also, the studies established that more nurses, as compared to California RNs, complained of dissatisfaction. For instance, Aiken et al. ’s study (2010) found that 34% of RNs in New Jersey complained of burnout as compared to 29% of RNs in California where there was a nurse-to-patient ratio policy and 26% of nurses in New Jersey and Pennsylvania were dissatisfied with their jobs while only 20% of nurses in California were dissatisfied with their job.
Nurse to Patient Ratio as it Affects Nurse Retention Nurse to patient ratios, unsafe staffing, and job satisfaction are topics on many nursing units within the hospitals today. The changes in the nurse to patient ratios, has led to a widespread real and perceived increase in RN workload, patient safety concerns, and nurse and consumer complaints. As a nurse leader, it has been noted there is an increased nurse turnover rate. What is it like for bedside medical-surgical registered nurses (P) to experience a 1:4 nurse to patient ratio (I) compared to 1:6 ratio (C) that leads to increase nurse retention (O)? Problem Statement and EBP Question
Staffing Staffing is the systematic approach to the problem of selecting, training, motivating and retaining professional and non professional personnel in any organization. Staffing is the whole personnel function of bringing in and training and maintain favourable conditions of work. It involves manpower planning to have the right person in the right place and avoid Square peg in round hole. Staffing is certainly one of the major problems of any nursing organization, whether it be a hospital, nursing home, health care agency, or in educational organization.