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Roles and responsibilities of a nurse outline
Role of nurse
Role of nurse
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It is often described that working in the nursing profession is chaotic (Ebright, 2010). However, no matter how chaotic it is, nurses have the responsibility of providing safe patient care. I could say that based from the scenario, the two concepts of complexity are time management and delegation. I have been on the night shift since I begin my nursing career and I have seen how chaotic a night shift can be. I understand that day shift is more stressful than the night shift because of the unexpected events that could happen. Aside from that, day shift staff has to deal with patients’ family, doctors, and other healthcare providers working with the patient. The nurse has to continually make decisions throughout the shift and determines what
The real world business situation I presented in the task 1 of this paper is as follows: I addressed a concern that a hospital would have by collecting and analyzing a set of data, specifically that of the hospital staff and the patient safety interaction. This situation which is relevant to a Hospital business that I will continue to answer in this paper by collecting and analyzing a set of data is: Is there a relationship to the number of hours a Registered Nurse (RN) works and patient safety? RNs are the main caregivers to the patient. They continually monitor, provide medication, take vitals, and assess the overall health of each patient in their care. With such a demanding job and many job duties, a deeper look at how they perform under not only stress but fatigue will allow us to see what type of care they are able to provide to their patients. The data we collect will allow us to answer if patients are safe with an RN working prolonged hours.
When the nursing team rounds on their patients hourly it is shown to have a relationship with a decrease call light use, falls, pressure ulcers, decrease in patient anxiety and increase in patient satisfaction rates (Ford, 2010). When hourly rounding does not occur on a hospital and patients cannot predict when the nurse will be available for physical and emotional assistance this can lead to patient consequences. When a patient cannot predict when the nurse will be available to assist or discuss can concerns that patient’s has can lead to an increase the patient’s anxiety level (Mitchell, Lavenberg, Trotta, & Umscheid, 2014). When a patient’s anxiety levels rises, the patient will try to compensate with inappropriate coping mechanisms such as, the patient trying to go to the
Alarm fatigue is a growing problem that causes nurses to feel overwhelmed and not perform to the best of their abilities. Many people don’t understand the concept of alarm fatigue until they are in a hospital and hear the different noises going on first hand. Alarm fatigue occurs when nurses or other health care members have sensory overload due to the alarms, which then lead to ignoring the alarms raising concerns with patient safety (Horkan, 2014).
...ork shifts depending on their ability. In addition, it is important for nurses to understand that it is their ethical responsibility to only practice when they are fit to do so. Moreover, nurses should take responsibility for self care and take adequate time to rest and recover after shifts. In general, nurses should be aware of their mental and physical capabilities and only work when they are well enough to do so.
This report explores the importance of communication between nurses, providers and different departments play a crucial role in the safety of quality of patient care and their future health outcomes. When nurses give improper handoff’s the patient and the next nurse on shift will be left at a disadvantage. This can lead to further health complications and longer hospital stays for the patients and possibly death. The fairly new bedside shift report has been proven to catch mistakes during report and improve care in the hospital and for the future overall health of the client.
The Joint Commission in 2012 strongmindedly determined that patient safety and communication need to be nurses priority. Bedside shift-to-shift handoff is one way to promote patient safety by allowing patients and families to be active contributors in the nursing shift handoff procedure. Bedside nursing shift report over the years has been identified to be more effective than giving patient’s report at the nurse station or recorded report because its less time consuming and resulting in lower costs expenses (Halm, 2013). In short, it allows the outgoing nurse to be able to end the shift on time, which prevents an accidental overtime and allows the incoming nurse to begin her patient care sooner starting with the patient that needed immediate care (Evans et al., 2012). Bedside nursing report implementation in a healthcare facility is critical in meeting the Joint Commission’s 2009 National Patient Safety Goals. Face-to-face bedside shift report encourages patients to be actively engaged in their care and it implements standardized handoff communication between nursing shifts (Maxson, Derby, Wrobleski, and Foss, 2012). Bedside handoff promotes patient safety and allows an opportunity for patients to correct
Witkoski Stimpfel, Amy , Douglas M. Sloane, and Linda H. Aiken. "The Loger the shifts for hosital nurses, the higher the levels of burnout and patient disstisfaction." Health Affairs 31.11 (2012): 2501-2509. Proquest. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
One of the major critical issues in nursing is mandatory overtime and nurses are being required to work long hours, doubles or extended shifts. Working mandatory overtime causes short staffing and leads to medical mistakes. In this paper we are going to talk about how this is an issue of concern for the nursing practice and health care delivery.
12-Hour Shifts and Nurse Fatigue” looked at 12-hour shifts compared to 8 hours and what effects fatigue from shifts can play. Some of the advantages of the longer shift for nurses is that it decreases the time the nurse spends traveling to and from the hospital, the cost for someone to watch their child because they are working fewer days; it also allows them to hold multiple jobs. It also can decrease hand-off errors as there due there only being two per 24 hours which might help to prevent errors. Other services also work more than 8 hours such as truck drivers, railroad workers, aviation, and the military. All of these have rules for the amount of time they are allowed to be working or deployed. ⁵“The Department of Transportation [DOT) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) each regulates the duty schedules for pilots, air traffic controllers, engineers, flight attendants, air mechanics, and other employees to maintain airline safety standards and protect the crew and passengers.” Truck drivers also have a set number of hours that they are allowed to work straight before they are mandated to take a break or stop. ⁶“There is not state or federal regulation of the hours that a nurse may work, although some states have passed legislation prohibiting mandatory overtime.” Facilities continue to offer, and some require nurses to work 12-hour shifts, even though there is evidence that shows adverse outcomes for patients. A study that was conducted
Every time I am in clinical something new always presents itself wheatear my patient is going to an unscheduled test or last minute medication has been order. I have always been the type of person that wants everything done in a timely manner, if something needs to be due by a certain time I make sure it gets done at that time. I quickly discovered that in nursing that is not always the case and in fact it is the exact opposite. At first I was struggling to having to adjust but quickly got the hang out of it but staying claim and not stressing out.
Notably, having higher proportions of nurses working shorter shifts—8–9 hours or 10–11 hours—resulted in decreases in patient dissatisfaction” (Stimpfel et al.). This is essentially saying that the longer the shift length, the more negative outcomes result. This study proves that eight to nine-hour shifts are more effective, and should, in turn, be worked more than longer shifts. This is a problem because hospitals are likely to continue to schedule nurses for twelve hours shifts out of
...expected in future years. Experts expect that in 2025, the nursing shortage will grow to 260,000 registered nurses. Occurring just as 7,000 U.S. citizens will be turning 65 every day. There has been documented 9 to 16 patients assigned to one nurse, and numbers were higher on the night shift. To cover gaps, nurses work overtime and are assigned to other units. “During one particularly frenetic evening on an unfamiliar unit, I was given only a tape-recorded report and assigned ten patients with whom I was unfamiliar” (Adams). This emphasizes how nurses are given patients they have no familiarity, this is a hazard because these nurses have not been properly informed of specific patient care and proper handling. Potentially dangerous medication errors can happen. Also insufficient nursing coverage can result in patients going unmonitored and unexamined for hours.
Health care students quickly forget, as they transition into the role of an RN, that varying work schedules, long hours, and split shifts start to create an unhealthy balance for the working nurse. Eating schedules are off and daily exercise is forgotten. Mental health is at risk for being compromised from an increased level of stress, anxiety and concern about patients’ conditions, which does not include the extra mental clutter from their personal lives. Quickly, the RN loses focus on a healthy balance coupled with the everyday workload. Have you ever heard of people talking about nurses falling apart? This is a prime example of how a nurse starts to unravel. At some point in a nurse’s career, the disintegration of one or more of the three main life style components, diet, exercise, or mental impacts his or her health.
Nurses are working under in a variety of shift work systems to be able to provide continuous care for patients. However, 24 hours workplace organizations are now very common, such as in the healthcare and industrial sectors. This requires the staff to be adapted with many various forms of shift work schedules. In terms of healthcare sector, the shift work schedules are considered shift duration which highlights two main categories of shift systems, each system provides 24 hours of care. The shift work can be three eight hours shift, or two twelve hours shift. Eight hour shifts can be divided as morning/afternoon/ and evening shifts for five days in a week. On the other hand, a twelve-hour shift is widely popular and characterized by a compressed working week which is more than eight-hour duration but less than five days in a week. Applying 12- hour shifts can result in a benefit by having more days off. Moreover, in response to nursing shortage and cost effectiveness, twelve-hour shifts are widely been applied in the hospitals. However, despite of the advantages of applying twelve-hour shifts, there are many disadvantages. Long working hours have an impact on nurse’s health and wellbeing. It found that long hour shifts are associated with fatigue which can increase the risk of nursing errors and affects the quality of nursing care. Additionally, the level of job satisfaction and stress among the nurses are affected (Scott et al.,2006).
Working long hours as a nurse can definitely be stressful especially when working at nights. Additionally, insufficient sleep is a huge factor that affects the performance of the nurse. Unlike day nurses, night shift nurses have to adjust their sleeping habits in order to stay awake throughout their shift. This issue is important because lack of sleep may compromise patient safety, such as increase risk of medication error or patient falls, resulting in poor patient outcomes. Sleepiness in nurses has been shown to impact patient care and safety (S. Surani, Hesselbacher, Guntupalli, S. Surani, & Subramanian, 2015). The purpose of this paper is to highlight the effect of insufficient sleep of night shift nurses that leads to stressful situations