After the Second World War the shortage was horrible. Now, many Americans are experiencing a serious shortage of nurses within the healthcare facilities. The shortage is caused by different factors that include aging workforce, reduction in the number of graduates from nursing schools, poor wages and other job working conditions. In addition, these shortages are forcing nurses to look for better paying jobs, such as private nursing. There is a variety of recommendations being examined as we speak.
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.
There is currently a larger nurse-to-patient ratio than most nurses would like. Along with the stress and long hours associated with the career choice of nursing, nurse burnout is a very common complaint in today’s society. Nurses often complain of being short staffed and having too large of a patient load. Interest in this topic comes from wanting to pursue management at some point in my career and working on a floor in which a second shift nurse could have twelve patients. Not only will nurses feel better, but better patient outcomes occur when units are better staffed.
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
The Joint Commission (2012) defines risk management in healthcare as “the clinical and administrative acts undertaken to identify and evaluate the risk of injury to staff, patients and visitors and the risk to loss of the organization itself”. Studies have shown that the litigation against nursing homes is on the rise; thus making risk management very important in day to day care. Malpractice insurance premiums for nursing homes are also on the rise; this contributes to bankruptcy and forces many facilities to operate without malpractice coverage (Weinburg M.D & Levine, 2008). This threatens quality of care and access to healthcare for ill elderly people that need round the clock care. Effective risk management in a nursing home requires one to accurately
(Murray, pg.2) As a nurse you deal with a lot of physical, mental and emotional stress. The stressed nurse may show physical sign of stress such as high blood pressure, headaches, nausea, chest pains and fatigue to just name a few. The behavioral signs are becoming withdrawn, under or over eating, and becoming accident prone and careless. (Murray, pg.4) The emotional signs of a nurse who may not be managing there stress are irritable, angers easily, depression and anxious. These symptoms can compromise the care of a patient or patients if not managed correctly.
Some of the deficiencies that were noted during the annual license and certification survey were the call light buttons were placed out of the reach of patients, issues with gastric feeding tubes, falls from beds and wheelchairs as well as lack of evaluation to prevent reoccurring falls. There were also problems when it came to transferring patients using mechanical lifts, improper maintenance of respiratory equipment, there was insufficient 24-hour nursing staff, failure to distribute and store food in a sanitary manner and there was also improper handling of medications and failure to maintain sanitary medication rooms. In the Winchester House they violated many of the rules and regulations and put the quality of care for the patients at risk because they were not providing adequate in service training for certified nursing assistants and they were not following the infection control standards when it came to hand washing and changing their gloves. Another current issue that long-term care is facing is staffing. When there is not enough staff in long-term care facilities this can cause issues because assistance can go unanswered for long periods of time and this can be a serious problem for patients who have to wait for assistance when it comes to needing to go to the
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?
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
“Burnout is a psychological experience that manifests itself in individual, particularly those involved in difficult person-to-person relationships as part of their work, such as nursing professionals (Hamaideh 1). Nurses in general are considered by some at a high risk for burnout because of they experience frequent interpersonal contact with their patients. Additional, there is a multitude of factors that can contribute to a nurse experiencing burnout. For example, a nurse with a large caseload, lower wages, and a weak support system is more likely to experience burnout and dissatisfaction with his or her job. Burnout can result in physical and psychological strain.