Nurses across the globe are saving multiple lives daily. They work hard to take care of various patients with an array of different health problems. They are accountable for not only caring for the patient’s health but also being empathetic and friendly with all visitors. Exactly how many patients is a nurse responsible for keeping safe, comfortable, and alive? It is difficult to say because the nurse to patient ratio policies varies immensely across state borders. The nursing staffing ratio is a policy that is very important yet is has been neglected for years. It is a policy that is not often considered as vital to patient survival but the policy is a straight contributor to the success of a hospital. Nurses are the backbone of a health care facility, yet they are overworked constantly. Some states do regulate how many patients a nurse is able to care for at one time; however, other states, such as Arizona, do not have any formal manner of regulating the nurse/patient staffing ratios. Their nurses could get a large number of patients assigned to them all at once and there is no policy protecting them from an overload of patients. This lack of structure is putting the lives of patients at …show more content…
In states like Arizona, nurses do not have a limit to a number of patients that can be assigned to a single person. According to the Arizona Scope of Practice Edition 28, “The Arizona Nurse Practice Act and the Arizona Board of Nursing does not have the authority to regulate healthcare facilities or mandate specific nurse/patient staffing ratios”. It is dangerous to have this policy so loosely interpreted. Assigning just one more patient to a nurse’s workload increases the chances of the patient dying by 7%(Sermeus, 2016). The textbook states that this is occurring because the administrators do not have much regard for the safety of patients and nurses alike but instead worry more about the saving
Identifying and maintaining the appropriate number of mixed nursing staff, RN/LPN/CNA, is critical to the delivery of quality patient care. Many studies reveal an association between a higher level of experienced RN staffing and lower rates of adverse patient outcomes (“Nurse staffing plans,” 2013). The nurse-patient ratios will in turn improve the nurses working conditions, decreasing the risk of errors to patients.
Our medical facilities are great places when they follow guidelines to promote healthy living and great patient care. Its one thing to say that your following them but another to actually implement them. It makes the living environment for the patients much better. To receive the best care possible the Patient to Nurse ratio must be taken into affect immediately. Patients will not receive the adequate care they need until then. Personally knowing the ends and out of what goes on in a medical facility this law is the best thing for all facilities. The patients benefit the best from it as well as the nurses. Nurses no longer will be burning themselves out. If you want things to change you have to help make a change.
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.
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
Refraining from blame being placed on nurses in regards to lapses in patient care, hospital administrators should ensure the safety of patients by examination of how health care is provided within the facility in relationship to changing nurses working conditions in an effort to allow safe care to patients. With inadequate nurse staffing in connections to unrealistic work loads contributes to unnecessary burden on nursing staff, reducing the quality of care that nurses can provide. Appropriate nurse staffing level are essential to optimizing quality of care and patient outcomes in this era of value-based
Staffing methods can play a large role in risk management. For instance, if there is not enough staff to take care of patients, it can be a very dangerous situation. The nurse will not be able to give the type of patient-centered care that each deserves. There is an increased for medical errors when the unit is understaffed and the nurses are overwhelmed. If the unit is overstaffed with nurses, it can be an issue too. However this issue involves finances. It can cause a negative variance in the budget. According to Yoder-Wise (2014), “Nurse managers must make skilled staffing and scheduling decisions to ensure that safe and cost effective care is provided by the appropriate level of caregiver” (p. 275).
This type of staffing is usually looked at three times per day, it pairs nurse to patients based on a ratio. A unit that staffs 1:5 means one nurse for each five patients. This model prevents uneven team numbers but does not take into consideration patient acuity. For example, one nurse may have three critically ill patients in their team of five, whereas, another nurse may have five intermediate level of care patients. While each nurse has the same number of patients, the teams are unequal in terms of acuity. In this scenario, one nurse definitely has a larger workload which makes stress levels
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.
It surprises me that only one state has enacted nurse patient ratios. Nurse to patient ratios are so important in patient safety as well as adequate staffing. It is hard to staff adequately with the nursing shortage that we have in our country. I know that in our hospital many staff are floated to other units. Liability could be lowered by only floating seasoned nurses to other floors. Seasoned staff some times are still uncomfortable floating to other floors but at least they are not new to being a nurse and new to that unit. Another way to reduce liability and to increase patient safety is to have a charge nurse or seasoned core staff member available to staff members to answer questions and assist with procedures. I work in the float pool
Hi Kimberly, I liked reading your post. I believe that our country has a lot of work to go to solve the inadequacy of nurse to patient ratios. Look at the Marquette strike; that’s not far from us. Again they were unhappy about the hospital’s refusal to guarantee minimum nurse staffing ratio so they could protect patient safety. I believe that having these conditions causes nurses to leave the profession because of emotion and physical stress. My mother a nurse and she stated she could never work in a hospitals setting due to the demand of work load and stress you endure. She currently works in an outpatient setting due PD nursing. For the question for how the nurse managers can help create an environment where nurses feel more comfortable
In the nursing world, situations and environmental factors can negatively affect patient outcomes. This nurse feels that errors mostly occur when staff is overworks and understaffed. When a nurse is in a hurry and there is no one to help out, errors occur. Another cause for a delay in treatment would be nursing high turnover rate. With high turn over rates come inexperienced nurses related to that specific unit.
Nursing staff shortage is expected to get worse. By the year 2020, the nurse staffing deficit is expected to rise to 525,000 by the year 2022. The rise is attributed to retirement of baby boomers and the rise in need for health care (AACN, 2014). Nursing shortage has negative impact on the public. A study done in 2011 showed a 6% rise in mortality rate in institutions that had nursing shortage compare to fully staffed units (AACN, 2014). In a different study, the patient readmission rate increased when a registered nurse was allocated to care for more than 4 patients (AACN, 2014).
There are a number of hazards in this case that deals with staffing, communication, and the hospital policies. Other contributing factors were the vital signs were not monitored properly on the patient and the patient did not receive oxygen or ECG monitoring after surgery. When the pulse oximeter started to alarm, the patient was not assessed. A complete review of the department’s staffing protocol, communication system, management style, and policy needs to be assessed for failures in the system. A manager was not mentioned in the incident and that is a major problem. The manager of the ED department should be available to assess the nurse patient ratio and monitor the department at all times.
The issue and need for mandated nurse to patient ratio doesn’t exist just within the borders of the U.S. Other countries such as China, India, and Australia have all done research as to whether or not they should have mandated staff guidelines. “Hospitals with nurse staffing below target levels were associated with increased mortality, reinforcing the need to match staffing with actual patients’ needs” (Yu, Ma, Sun, Lu, Xu 2015). In China a survey was done to assess their nurses and the different factors that influence care and fatigue in health care settings. “A survey of 9688 nurses and 5786 patients in 181 Chinese hospitals found that higher patient-to-nurse ratios were associated with poorer nurse outcomes (e.g. burnout, job dissatisfaction, low nurse ratings for patient care)” (Yu, Ma, Sun, Lu, Xu
A nurse job goes far beyond performing physical assessments, giving medications, and entering patient findings and health information in a computer. Their responsibility of promoting the wellbeing involves many more aspects of care that seem to be ignored often. As a nursing student doing my clinical practicum, I have noticed that the patient-nurse ratio is one of the main reasons why nursing care today is not as perfect as it is expected to be. Such ratio forces nurses to give less priority to certain details of patient care that when frequently evaded can result in negative outcomes.