Solutions for Nursing Personnel Shortages Executive Summary Senior Human Resource Management should adopt some changes in order to combat the current growing nursing/healthcare personnel shortage. Employees simply want to be heard and sympathized with. Nowadays the nursing shortage has caused many problems in the healthcare industry. First and foremost, the quality of care being provided to patients is declining due to the fact that there are not as many nurses to care for the patient appropriately. As a matter of fact, the workload being dumped on the employees is steadily increasing.
The term professional burnout is described as “physical, emotional and mental exhaustion that results from long-term involvement in work situations that are emotionally demanding” (Wlodarczyk, & Lazarewicz, 2011 p.848), highlighting how the work place environment is directly affecting an individual’s health and well-being. When trying to connect the concepts of stress and professional burnout, studies indicted a high level of prolonged stress leads into professional burnout (Gandi & Dagona, 2011). Professional burnout in nursing has been published in multiple professional journals including; research, ethics, nursing management, as well as other
Workplace Fatigue; Finding a solution to this common problem I chose to talk about workplace fatigue because it is so common among all types of nurses and needs to be addressed and worked on. A big thing for nurses to do is to understand their limit and signs that they are becoming too tired or stressed. When nurses get stressed it starts to affect their lives at work and home. A major problem with fatigued nurses is patient care. The fatigued nurse becomes overwhelmed and can easily make mistakes such as medication errors or performing procedures on the wrong patient.
Some patients were also made to shower with their clothes on. The program un-covered serious abuse within the Hospital and there was a public outcry. Several people wrote to the Prime Minster who was reportedly “appalled” by the findings. The national regulator Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) involvement, Ms Margaret Flynn was asked to investigate what was happening at the Hospital and undertake a Serious Case Review. Whilst investigating she spoke to patients, workers, NHS staff and family members and learnt that there was a high level of physical intervention by the staff and some of the patents very badly hurt with some seen to be self-harming.
Generally the nurses experiences of care for the dementia patient in the acute care setting was one of uncertainty, due to the fact the nurses felt they had a specific lack of knowledge. Nurse’s knowledge and education As the population grows and there’s an increase in the number of dementia patients, nurses in the acute care setting need to be skilled and educated to support patients with dementia as stated by (Archibald & Cunningham 2006 p.55I). Erikson & Saveman (2002) described the lack of specialized education for nurses in regards to dementia patients in the acute care setting. This is of particular concern as there are many demands on nurses in the acute care setting and can influence the nature of the care they give. According to Nolan (2006, p.213) nurses had concerns of
“When you delegate, you entrust another person to act in your placed for that particular task or cluster of tasks.” (Hansten & Jackson, 2009, p. 274). The nursing profession has gone through many changes of its practice model. With the past and projected nursing shortages, and the financial challenges of many organizations, nurses are being asked to work with more unlicensed assistive personnel (UAP). In order to provide safe and effective care to our patients, nurses are being asked to assume more of a coordinator of care role, while delegating many tasks to the UAP’s. This has caused much frustration for many nurses as they have never had formal delegation training.
Nurses always experience compassion fatigue compared to other health care professionals due to direct patient care and they spend more time with the patients compared to others. Health care professionals cannot fix everything, it makes them exhausted and disappointed with their work and experience compassion fatigue. It is very important for the health care professionals to care for themselves from compassion fatigue. Warning signs for compassion fatigue Compassion fatigue is an empathetic strain to the health care professionals. They focus on others and forget to care for themselves.
Burnout in nursing is one of the major problems that occur due to the shortage of staff members, variable shift works, dissatisfaction and stressors of workplace that can lead to physical, emotional, social and long-term career effects to the nurses. However, it can be resolved by following a problem focused copping mechanism and positive emotion focused coping mechanism. Besides this, working as a team at work place and practicing healthy life style also can help in resolving burnout. Causes of Burnout in Nursing The demand of nurses is increasing at a great pace all over the world. No matter how many nurses a country produces every year, there is always a shortage of workers.
Everyone was in amazement because she rarely spoke, If I had gone on working and not stopped to check out the yelling then the other aide would have continue to abuse other patient's. Her license was revoked. The facility as well as the family pressed chargeds. Elder abuse is growing because the number of older citizens has increased. Estimates show that between one and two million people age 65 and over are injured, exploited , or otherwise mistreated by the person caring for them.
Healthcare organizations are finding it difficult to provide quality healthcare services in a timely manner due to the nursing staff shortages. Healthcare facilities are attempting to develop solutions to solve this shortage problem, but the current solutions are resulting in short term negative impacts. This warrants the need to continue to look for innovative ways to offset the additional costs as well as the reduction in quality that is being felt. NURSING STAFF SHORTAGES Nursing Staff Shortages: Why is There a Problem and What Can be Done to Solve It? A large problem in today’s healthcare environment is a shortage of nurses to fill positions.