Clinical Nursing Shortage Essay Assignment Paper
Essay instructions.
The essay should address the following prompt:
Describe a clinical problem in your practice setting and explain why it is a problem warranting a change to impact patient and or organizational outcomes.
- The essay should be at least 500 words and professional, not personal. While you may not currently function in a direct care role, please be sure your problem can be tied to patient outcomes. You may use citations and references to support your essay. Essays should be written according to APA Style 7th Edition and free from spelling and grammatical errors. Clinical Nursing Shortage Essay Assignment Paper
Clinical problem to write on: Nursing Shortage
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One of the commonest clinical practice concerns or issues is the lack of enough nurse numbers in healthcare institutions around the United States. Fatigue among the few nurses who stay is inevitable when the workload is greater than the actual number of nurses (Jacobs et al., 2018). In terms of care quality and performance, this is harmful to the organization. This is due to the increased probability of judgmental errors in a nurse who has compassion fatigue and burnout from an excessive workload. There is a recurring nursing shortage in healthcare settings in the United States for a variety of reasons, including dissatisfaction with the job, insufficiently competitive or inadequate pay, burnout from heavy workloads, a lack of incentives for professional growth, an imbalanced workload, and a lack of psychological safety at the job (Palumbo et al., 2017; Wise, 2018). The purpose of this paper is to discuss nursing shortage as a pertinent healthcare clinical practice issue and why healthcare organizations must address it for better outcomes. Clinical Nursing Shortage Essay Assignment Paper
Why Nursing Shortage is a Problem in the Practice Setting
A nurse who is overworked as a result of a nursing shortage is more likely to make major mistakes such as medication errors that endanger patient safety. These mistakes put the company at risk of being sued for malpractice and professional negligence, both of which are torts. According to the Tort of Negligence, the company will be held financially liable and must make restitution. This can only be prevented by a company limiting a high nurse rate of turnover. Therefore, addressing the lack of nursing staff must also be a focus of organizational risk management methods in healthcare organizations (Pittman & Scully-Russ, 2016). This means doing everything to ensure staff retention and preventing a higher than normal turnover.
Other nurse shortage factors that affect the organization’s quality of care in practice will be reduced nurse-patient ratios, delayed nursing interventions as nurses are few, increased incidence of pressure injuries and patient falls, and a spike in the rate of healthcare-associated infections or HAIs (catheter-associated urinary tract infection or CAUTI, ventilator-associated pneumonia or VAP, and central line-associated blood stream infections or CLABSI). According to Day-Calder (2017), policymakers ought to take into account the fact that overwhelmed nurses may feel more empowered and motivated only if they are paid decently and acknowledged for their hard work. Clinical Nursing Shortage Essay Assignment Paper
Combes et al. (2018) hypothesize that the organization’s low pay contributes to a shortage of nursing staff. The researchers examined the roles of assistant nurses (ANs) and registered nurses (RNs) employed in hospitals in the United Kingdom between 2003 and 2005. They found that a ten percent increase in registered nurses’ competitive pay decreased the shortfall of both RNs and ANs by 0.6 percent for RNs and 0.4 percent for ANs. These findings are very instructive.
Addressing Nursing Shortage with Change to Impact Patient and/ or Organizational Outcomes
According to several studies (Combes et al., 2018; Day-Calder, 2017; Wise, 2018), ways to avoid nursing shortages include providing nurses with competitive pay, developing staff development programs such as sponsorship for nursing education, and fostering a friendly and welcoming workplace through transformational nursing leadership. Making changes to existing laws or introducing new ones as part of healthcare policy is a particularly successful tactic. As an illustration, consider the National Nursing Shortage Reform and Patient Advocacy Act of 2015 (National Nurses United, n.d.). In all hospitals, this Act established minimum nurse-to-patient ratios. Additionally, it establishes mandatory expenditure on nurse training and retraining as a matter of course and protects nurses’ advocacy responsibilities. Clinical Nursing Shortage Essay Assignment Paper
Other strategies to address the practice problem of nursing shortages are effective two-way and open communication, recruitment of additional nursing staff through staffing agencies, and the provision of incentives to get hold of current employee nurses. Incentives can be in the form of fringe benefits like family and medical leave, health insurance, and retirement plans. Effective communication can be facilitated by transformational nurse leaders.
Conclusion
Nursing shortage has been a perennial clinical practice problem in the United States. Addressing it requires a multifaceted and multidimensional approach to management. According to a number of recent studies, top of the agenda in addressing nursing shortage and preventing a high turnover is better remuneration and a welcoming psychologically safe work environment. Clinical Nursing Shortage Essay Assignment Paper
References
Combes, J-B., Elliott, R.F. & Skåtun, D. (2018): Hospital staff shortage: The role of the competitiveness of pay of different groups of nursing staff on staff shortage. Applied Economics. https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2018.1490000
Day-Calder, M. (2017). How to cope with staff shortages. Nursing Standard, 31(19). http://dx.doi.org/10.7748/ns.31.19.37.s40
Jacobs, B., McGovern, J., Heinmiller, J., & Drenkard, K. (2018). Engaging employees in well-being moving from the Triple Aim to the Quadruple Aim. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 42(3), 231-245. https://doi.org/10.1097/NAQ.0000000000000303
National Nurses United (n.d.). RATIOS: National Nursing Shortage Reform and Patient Advocacy Act – S. 992 (Boxer). https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/ratios-national-nursing-shortage-reform-and-patient-advocacy-act-s.-992-box
Palumbo, M.V., Rambur, B., & Hart, V. (2017). Is health care payment reform impacting nurses’ work settings, roles, and education preparation? Journal of Professional Nursing, 33, 400-404. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2016.11.005
Pittman, P., & Scully-Russ, E. (2016). Workforce planning and development in times of delivery system transformation. Human Resources for Health, 14(56), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-016-0154-3
Wise, J. (2018). Hospital suspends chemotherapy because of nurse shortage. BMJ. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k4687 Clinical Nursing Shortage Essay Assignment Paper