Understaffing Issues In Nursing Case Study

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Research question
Does chronic understaffing issues in emergency department(ED) increase nurses’ stress and affects overall health which make nurses lead to quit profession earlier? What steps can be taken to reduce understaffing issue EDs?
The shortage of nursing staff is a national and international issue. Moreover, Oulton (2006) clearly explains that today’s global nursing shortage is having an adverse impact on health systems around the world. However, the shortage of nurses in EDs has become a critical challenge now a day due to stress, lack of staff motivation and retention within the profession especially in EDs (Asiret, Kapucu, Kose, Kurt, & Ersoy, 2017). Moreover, reducing staff makes existing nurses responsible for more work; increase …show more content…

Furthermore, I will be explaining how chronic understaffing issue resulted from continuously facing on the job ethical dilemmas and stress affects the overall health of nurses lead them to quit profession earlier. I will be expanding on steps can be taken to reduce or improve understaffing issues and help nurses’ to cope with the situation. Lastly, I will conclude that what I learned from this research and how I will be able to apply knowledge gained from this essay during my nursing …show more content…

After reflecting on the research and this assignment, I have identified that the nurses have greater accountability professionally, legally and ethically, which expects nurses to keep the safety and well-being of patients at the center of their care. Moreover, EDs are busy and overcrowded environment where people are acutely ill, and often require immediate attention and intervention, which can result in nurses becoming stressed and overworked results in understaffing (Kennedy , 2017). The nurses can try to reduce their feeling of stress in nursing or eliminate the stressful situations by using different strategies, resources and techniques such as self-reliance, seeking help from others and spiritual coping (Akbar, Elahi, Mohammadi, & Khoshknab, 2017). Lastly, these strategies also provide nurses internal strength to fight against stressors and eventually nurses will stay in the profession for

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