“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.
There is a shortage of nurses, and not enough seats in nursing education programs to allow for everybody who applies to nursing school to be able to pursue a degree in nursing. Also, the cost of a four-year degree in nursing is quite high, which leads many people to opt for the less expensive two-year associate’s degree in nursing (ADN). An associate’s degree education provides the basics of nursing without the time to develop theory or adequate research skills to be able to perform at the same level as registered nurses (RNs) with a bachelor’s degree in nursing science (BSN). For this reason, many advocate for the emphasis of the four-year degree over the two-year degree. A George Washington University study published in Science Daily says, “If health care employers are serious about wanting a more highly educated workforce, they will need to go beyond the current ‘soft policies’ and adopt more forceful measures, such as requirements for degree completion and wages that reward nurses who have worked to get a BSN or advanced degrees” (George Washington University, 2013).
It is important to analyze the different dynamics to these potential problems. Within this analyzes, I would look at the opportunities and constraints of entering data into the system. Are the constraints that the hospital staff have due to the with number of patients being seen and the time to enter the data? Analyzing the fact that there is an opportunity cost situation where possible hospital staff have a certain amount of time with each patient, and now that there has been even more work to be completed for this patient they get caught entering data and not spending the time needed with the patient. Hospital staff may not understand what opportunities that the data could bring to the hospital staff and patients?
Barriers to accessing services These are the factors that prevent an individual gaining access to health, social care and early years services. It may be that they do not know about the services available. Individuals may face more than on barrier to accessing services. Physical barriers * These are objects that prevent an individual from getting where they must go e.g. a wheelchair user is unable to enter a building because the doorway is too narrow or there are steps so they can’t get to the entrance.
“Hospital-acquired infection” (HAI) is a serious and prevalent issue in today’s healthcare field. The Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital finds this issue to be grave and is doing all that they can to eradicate HAI for good. Hospital-acquired infections are infections that come about during the course of the hospitalization and treatment, but were not present when the patient was admitted to the hospital. According to the CDC, hospital-acquired infections show up “48 to 72 hours after admission or 10 days after discharge” (Collins, n.d.). The reason for this window of time for the infection to develop is because hospitals try to have the duration of hospital stays decreased.
Withdrawal of food and fluid from terminally ill patients is a growing ethical issue and concerns patients, families, and nurses as well. The study sampled 160 nurses and they completed a questionnaire that included forced-choice and open-ended questions and the act of withdrawing treatment was supported by nurses only for two specific conditions - if the patients requested it and if it relieved the patient of his or her suffering. However, it is widely agreed that doctors' orders, family's requests or even the patient's advanced age could not and should not ethically justify the act of withholding or withdrawing treatment. The study suggests that apart from the direct clinical issues concerned, the ethical, social and cultural factors seem to play a significant role in any decision of withdrawing or withholding treatment. In this essay we discuss the implications of withdrawing treatment and the role of nurses in this regard.
Nursing Home Neglect and Abuse Nursing Home Neglect and Abuse Even though many of us may have to struggle with putting a loved one into a skilled nursing facility, there comes a time when elders can no longer take care of themselves due to physical, emotional or mental problems. Skilled nursing facilities can provide a wide range of personal care and health services so when you’re deciding on a health care facility for them, don’t settle for anything but the best. One bad judgment call and your loved ones could end up being victims of abuse. Many families lose their loved ones every year as a result of nursing home abuse and according to the best available estimates, between one and two million Americans age sixty five or older have been injured, exploited or otherwise mistreated by someone on whom they depended for care or protection (National center on elder abuse, 2011). Nursing home abuse and negligence is any physical, sexual, verbal, psychological, or financial abuse perpetrated against residents of a residential care facility.
Neilson et al (1996) surveyed a random sample of care plans from acute psychiatric inpatient units addressing initial assessment; formulation of a care plan; co-ordination and implementation of care; evaluation and discharge planning. Overall, the quality of nursing care plans was poor. De la Cuesta (1983) found nurses gave many reasons for their inability to care plan appropriately, including difficulties in articulating written problem statements and with analysis of data. Many nurses saw little relationship between the written plan and the actual care of the service user. They reported insufficient time to record the care plans.
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.
A large problem in today’s healthcare environment is a shortage of nurses to fill positions. This shortage is felt throughout the entire medical industry rather than just the hospital aspect of the medical profession. As an addition to this problem, state governments and the Federal Government have failed to address this issue with adequate legislation. This leaves the individual medical facilities to devise solutions on their own. Nursing positions constitute one of the largest occupations in the healthcare industry.