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Communication approaches in nursing
Why advocacy is important in nursing for patient
Staff shortage as a nursing issue
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Recommended: Communication approaches in nursing
In the 1990s many United State hospitals became progressively frantic to make money and stay open. Healthcare costs were on the rise and had been for many years. Insurance companies were starting to determine reimbursement rates and declined to pay for a lot of patient’s procedures. These private insurance companies began to gain power and altered the healthcare system. Due to the changes in reimbursements, hospitals began to cut costs by internally reconstructing their care, equipment, and even reducing the number of staff on each unit. People who were hit the hardest by these reductions were registered nurses. Nurses were required to take on higher patient workloads. The nursing role was even reduced and many tasks done by the nurse …show more content…
She analyzes the doctor-nurse relationship, the lack of nursing staff members, power struggles between healthcare providers and hospital administrators, and the dismantling of nursing. I will be focusing on the hospitals’ inability to provide enough nursing staff members on a unit and the effects it has on patient care and safety. During my reading, I was drawn to Weinberg’s statement, “As their workload increased, nurses focused on the immediate tasks necessary to stabilize patients and were less able to focus on the “big picture” of caring for the patient (Wienberg,2003). This quote was talking about the nursing shortage on each unit and the inability for nurses to provide quality care to their patients. The nurses were focusing on the tasks at hand; for example, wound care or medication administration. Due to a lack of time, nurses were unable to provide extra care. Lack of time impeded the nurses’ ability to use their nursing skills to plan and execute the necessary care for patients. Nurses were starting to feel overwhelmed with the amount of work they had forced upon them and they felt bad for the patients. They knew the care they were providing was inadequate but they had no choice but to deal with what the hospital guidelines stated. In the end, the patient was the one who was suffering. The patient symptoms weren’t treated as well as they should have been and there were errors …show more content…
I would advocate for my peers to enhance the nursing profession and would improve on patient care. The role of an advocate is to work on behalf of self and/or others to raise awareness of a concern and to promote solutions to the issue. Advocacy often requires working through formal, decision-making bodies to achieve a desired outcome (Tomajan, 2012). I would respect both nursing cohorts from the two hospitals to find common ground. Before we could take our solutions to upper management, we would first have to establish a mission statement that included our values and beliefs. BIDMC failed to form a unified nursing system and forced Deaconess nurses to adopt a new system. Once a unified system was established we could take our problems to upper management. Nurses need to stand together first before they can tackle the underlying issues of patient safety. We would need to communicate to the hospital administrators that patient satisfaction and safety is declining because we do not have the staff to provide quality care. If you hire more nurses to manage a unit you can increase the care provided and thus increase turnover and lower readmission. We would communicate to unit managers and upper management that spending money now would save money in the future. To do this, we would conduct quantitative and qualitative research by highlighting patient safety and
In particular, the use of Florence Nightingale’s theory of nursing as the basis of my new practice had allowed me to begin with the basics and work my way forward toward a more modern and holistic approach to nursing care. While Florence’s work focused mainly on the military and her care of soldiers, she began to establish schools of nursing to promote nursing education and to encourage people to view nursing as a viable profession, (Alligood, 2014. 63). Nightingale’s focus may have been care of the military, but she made great strides on getting recognition for nursing and her theories still affect the practice of nursing today. In the article, Nurses as Leaders, the author proposes that nurse leaders have made great strides since Nightingale’s time when nurses were conscripted to help care for wounded soldiers. Such a setting required these early nurse pioneers to rely on critical thinking and quick action in order to save lives. The author goes on to discuss how a change in nursing occurred in the early 20th century as new management styles emerged, most notable the “Scientific Management,” model. This style placed doctors at the top, then nurse managers, and on down to bedside care staff. Though this did allow some nurses the ability to move upward, nurses resented a doctor being in charge of their teams as the work of a physician and that of a nurse are two very different practices, ("Nurses as Leaders," 2016). This is quite different from the modern concept of a nurse executive as leader of
Current literature continues to reiterate the indicators of a major shortage of registered nurses (RNs) in the United States. The total RN population has been increasing since 1980, which means that we have more RNs in this country than ever before (Nursing Shortage). Even though the RN population is increasing, it is growing at a much slower rate then when compared to the rate of growth of the U.S. population (Nursing Shortage). We are seeing less skilled nurses “at a time of an increasingly aging population with complex care needs and an increasingly complex technological care environment” (Mion). According to recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Department of Health and Human Services, it is estimated that “more than a million new and replacement nurses will be needed over the next decade” (Diagnosis: Critical).
The nurse to patient ratio is unrealistic in many hospitals. In most cases it is almost impossible to give each patient the true amount of detailed care they really need. This is seen in most cases where there is one nurse assigned to 16 patients and each patient requires a different level of attention. Nurses are pressed for time, forcing them to cut corners, resulting in an increase in nosocomial infections and patient deaths. “The past decade has been a unsettled time for many US hospitals and practicing nu...
It is clear that statewide mandated nurse-to patient ratios result in drastic financial changes for every hospital impacted. Hospitals often have to compensate for hiring more nurses by laying off support staff. Mandated ratios also result in an increase in holding time in emergency rooms . (Douglas,
The nursing shortage most likely does not mean a great deal to people until they are in the care of a nurse. The United States is in a severe nursing shortage with no relief in sight due to many factors compounding the problem and resulting in compromised patient care and nurse burnout. Nursing shortages have been experienced in the past by the United States and have been overcome with team effort. However, the current shortage is proving to be the most complex and great strides are being made to defeat the crisis before it becomes too difficult to change. Researchers anticipate that by 2010, the United States will need almost one million more registered nurses than will be available (Cherry & Jacob, 2005, p. 30).
Since the 1990’s, the interest in nursing and the profession as a whole has decreased dramatically and is still expected to do so over the next 10-15 years according to some researchers. With this nursing shortage, many factors are affected. Organizations have to face challenges of low staffing, higher costs for resources, recruiting and reserving of registered nurses, among liability issues as well. Some of the main issues arising from this nurse shortage are the impact of quality and continuity of care, organizational costs, the effect it has on nursing staff, and etc. However, this not only affects an organization and community, but affects the nurses the same. Nurses are becoming overwhelmed and are questioning the quality of care that each patient deserves. This shortage is not an issue that is to be taken lightly. The repercussions that are faced by both nurses and the organization are critical. Therefore, state funding should be implemented to private hospitals in order to resolve the shortage of nurses. State funds will therefore, relieve the overwhelming burdens on the staff, provide a safe and stress free environment for the patient, and allow appropriate funds needed to keep the facility and organization operational.
1. What is the difference between a. and a. Which K, S, and A pertain to the care you provided to the patient you have chosen? Why do you need to be a member? K- Describe the limits and boundaries of therapeutic patient-centered care. S- Assess levels of physical and emotional comfort.
Thousands of nurses throughout the nation are exhausted and overwhelmed due to their heavy workload. The administrators do not staff the units properly; therefore, they give each nurse more patients to care for to compensate for the lack of staff. There are several reasons to why
This article is a comprehensive look at staffing on hospital units. It used a survey to look at characteristics of how the units were staffed – not just ratio, but the experience and education level of the nurses. It evaluated several different categories of hospital facilities – public versus private, academic medical centers versus HMO-affiliated medical centers, and city versus rural. It is a good source because it shows what some of the staffing levels were before the status quo of the ratio legislation passed in California. It’s main limitation as a source is that it doesn’t supply any information about patient outcomes.
The major concern for registered nurses regard’s the nurse’s health and well being. Safe staffing levels are continuing to become more of a problem. The U.S is expected to experience a shortage of nurses as the “Baby Boomers” age and the need for health care grows (Rossester, 2014). This shortage is causing some health organizations to work with minimal amounts of nurses. This is affecting the nurse’s ability to provide safe care due to fatigue and injury. This shortage is also resulting in a dramatic increase in the amount of mandatory overtime, which often means that nurses stray from face-to-face patient care and can produce an increase in the amount of medical errors (American Nurses Association,
Health care professionals want to promote health and relieve human suffering. When people go to a hospital they are expecting to get the best care possible. Patients put their trust in the employees of any medical facility as they seeking help from you. Nurses like Justin is not giving the best care to his patients by forgetting to give medications and not following through on orders. When Justin forgets such things he is putting the patients’ health
The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of nursing staffing ratios in the healthcare industry. This has always been a primary issue, and it continues to grow as the population rate increases throughout the years. According to Shakelle (2013), in an early study of 232,432 surgical discharges from several Pennsylvania hospitals, 4,535 patients (2%) died within 30 days of hospitalization. Shakelle (2014) also noted that during the study, there was a difference between 4:1 and 8:1 patient to nurse ratios which translates to approximately 1000 deaths for a group of that size. This issue can be significantly affected in a positive manner by increasing the nurse to patient ratio, which would result in more nurses to spread the work load of the nurses more evenly to provide better coverage and in turn result in better care of patients and a decrease in the mortality rates.
The medical community has changed since the 1980s, as positions and duties has changed. Each position contains specific duties to help with patient care and outcome. Just like a pyramid, each position holds a superior rank to the other. The doctors are at the peak and control the patient care. They make the decisions based on the information provided to them by the nurses. The registered nurse (RN) is at the next level and communicates between the doctors and the supporting staff. The supporting staff, the final level, assist the patients on a one on one basis. This pyramid of positions alters depending on the specialty or facility that an individual is employed, and condition of the patient. One without the other is an impossible task...
Bedside nurses want to change staffing levels to assure that they have enough time to both keep up with the constantly evolving health care and to provide safe patient care. Yet, healthcare employers consider that reducing nurse patient ratio is an unnecessary expense that has not been proven to improve quality of patient care (Unruh, 2008). Employers emphasize that raising nursing staffing level is not cost-effective. In fact, in accordance with ANA’s report (2013), a study, in the Journal of Health Care Finance, confirmed that reducing patient-nurse ratios increased hospital costs, but did not lower their profitability. Higher hospital costs were attributed to wages and benefits allocated to newly hired nurses. Yet, according to Cimiotti et.al (20112), it is more costly for hospitals to not invest money on nursing.
Being a registered nurse affords one the option of working in many diverse healthcare settings. In any practice setting the climate of health care change is evident. There are diverse entities involved in the implementation and recommendation of these practice changes. These are led by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the Institute of Medicine (IOM), nursing campaign for action initiatives, as well as individual state-based action coalitions. Nurses need to be prepared and cognizant of the transformations occurring in health care settings as well as the plans that put them at the forefront of the future.