A Research Study On Healthcare Workers Need For Patient Readmission And Medicare Reimbursement

Staff nurses have great responsibilities in caring for patients. Often, these nurses experience heavy workload. Heavy patient load and stress contributes to burnout. Why is burnout important to discuss in relation to nurses? Burnout affects the performance of the nurse and the quality of care he or she provides to the patient. Therefore, it is imperative that staff nurses decrease the possibility of burnout and increase or maintain excitement and enjoyment in the field of nursing. If nurses do so, they will find joy in their work and quality of patient care will be increased. Contributors to burnout and

The term burnout, according to Catalano, is a continuing depletion of energy and strength combined with a loss of motivation and commitment after prolonged exposure to high occupational stress (2015). When a unit or facility is understaffed, not only do the nursing staff get burnt out, the patients also don’t receive the quality of care they deserve. Due to the increase in workload, nursing staff are more prone to making mistakes and medical errors and sometime times do not fellow facility policies. The nurse-patient ratio aspect sometimes gets overlooked at and that could lead to possible medication errors, lack of communication, falls, neglect, abuse and/or death may occur. Sometimes, it become so overwhelming people turn to leave the workforce all together. When nurses and CNA workload increase, they become frustrated and unhappy, and the desire to leave

Conversely, the How to Guide: Five Steps to Safer Surgery is an adjunct to the World Health Organization (WHO), Safe Surgery Saves Lives: The Second Global Patient Safety Challenge. In this, the primary goal is to confirm that surgical teams not only communicate, but follow safety standards in order to minimize common mistakes and insure the best outcome for surgical patients. The standards included in this literature emphasize, “improving anesthetic safety practices, ensuring surgery is undertaken on the correct part of the body, preventing surgical site infections, and improving communication and teamwork” (Beaumont & Russell, 2012). The actual checklist consists of the following 5-step process:

According to the Hospital National Patient Safety Goals, Goal 7 is to reduce the risk of health-care associated infections. NPSG.07.0.01 deals with surgical-site infections. The question to be asked is, “Why are surgical site infections a problem?” The prevention of surgical site infections can occur before and during surgery, with certain actions of the nurse, and when the patient is healthy. One way surgical site infections can occur is during surgery, or intra-operation. Sources of bacteria, exogenously, include the airborne route as a significant source of infection. Endogenously, infections can occur from the normal flora of a patient (Edmiston & Spencer, 2014a). Surgical site infections are a problem intra-operatively because of operating room temperatures not being controlled, misuse of sterile procedure, and improper hand hygiene. Operating room temperatures should be kept between 68 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit or 20 to 24 degrees Celsius. There also needs to be positive

With the passing of the Affordable Care Act, a rise in patient care was expected however there were several factors that weren’t expected. One such factor was the number of patients that had chronic illnesses that had been ignored for so long due to not having insurance. The care for these critically ill patients caused an increased strain on nurses and other health care professionals. The increased stress on workers caused them to consider an alternative career. Workplace stress is has contributed to an increase amount of depression and burnout in nurses, which caused a ripple effects of call outs, nurse shortage, and more burnout. Another factor that was not considered was the increased amount of paperwork that has been added. According to the new regulations of the Affordable Care Act, “190 million additional hours of paperwork annually” (heritage.com) has been added which inadvertently has reduced the amount of one on one patient time. This again, is another factor that will contribute to the burnout of the healthcare professionals.

Several studies have shown that patients get well faster and safer when they receive more nursing care. Even more importantly according to Linda Aiken study (2003), mortality rates and staffing ratios are closely tied. Each additional patient per RN after four patients, chances of dying in the hospital is increased by 7%.Patient on a surgical unit with patient –RN ratio of 8:1 were 31% more likely to die within 30days than those on surgical units with ratios of 4:1.Studies have shown that more infections like UTI, pneumonia, shock or cardiac arrest increases when patients receive fewer hours of nursing care. Medication errors and unsafe hand washing techniques were found more in increased patient workloads. Unsafe staffing gave more job dissatisfaction, job burnout and more nurses quit or drove nurses away from nursing. This increased mandatory overtime and increased nurse shortage. According to survey of California state

In the ever changing world of healthcare, healthcare organizations in order to be the most efficient in their delivery of healthcare, streamline their organizational structure to stay competitive, while providing the best patient care possible. This process can place increasingly undue stress onto its staff resulting in nurses having to do more with less available resources which ultimately increases their workload, has them working longer hours due to staff shortage, which contributes to an increase in the nurse burnout rates. This eventually filters down to the patient’s level of care and means less time spent on each

Hospital data on specific nursing-sensitive indicators can help a facility advance quality patient care and prevent any new adverse events through education, increased staff, acknowledgement, and accountability. The healthcare facility can post these indicators and the data associated with them including location in the facility and staffing numbers. This helps to bring these indicators to a more individual level whether it be per unit or per person. This along with acuities helps to justify the need for larger numbers in staffing. Although facilities would sometimes rather work with minimum staffing allowed, it is necessary to show that with more staff patients are receiving a higher level of quality care. These numbers might reflect this. This data might also compare the number of hospital acquired pressure ulcers with the use of restraints. This might show staff another reason for promoting a restraint free environment. It must be stressed to nursing staff that they have a direct impact on these nursing-sensitive indicators. Nursing staff could be educated on prevention and early detection of any indicators.

This policy sets out guidelines for the staff to help ensure that the workplace is up to a high standard when it comes to a safe and healthy environment. The employees of the surgery have a responsibility to follow these health and safety rules while at work. This policy is set in place to ensure that staff and patients are in safe premises and are surrounded by safe equipment. The transport, use, storage and handling of substances must be safe and done with care. These duties include each member of staff taking responsibility of their own health and safety as well as other people who may be affected by their actions or errors, staff must not intentionally or recklessly misuse or interfere with anything that is provided in the interests of health and safety at work, all members of staff are required to report any hazard or unsafe working practice in the surgery and to take appropriate action to make the situation safe if possible, also they must report any accident or incident that they are involved in to their supervisor or manager and complete an incident form in detail.

Working with the available staff increases the nurses’ workload and the risk for patients’ negative outcomes. Heavy nursing workload adversely affects patient safety and negatively affects nursing job satisfaction (Carayon & Gurses, 2008, p. 1). Furthermore, a study on the hospital nurse shortage and the California legislation about minimum hospital patient-to-nurse ratios concluded that the nurse staffing levels affect patients’ outcomes detrimentally; for each additional patient per nurse was associated with a 7% increase in the likelihood of dying within 30 days of admission and a 7% increase in the odds of failure-to-rescue. In addition, this study concluded that 23% of the nurses were associated with burnout and a 15% increase in job dissatisfaction (Aiken, Clarke, Sloane, Sochalski, & Silber, 2002, p.

Safe and adequate nurse staffing levels are an essential part of the health care policy in providing safe and high level of quality care for patients. Nurses play a fundamental role in the health care system in delivering quality care and safe guarding patients both in the hospital and in the community settings. Most evidence-based studies associated lower patient mortality rate with safe nurse staffing levels. Although, healthcare organisation stress nurses’ on providing high quality care but financial cost of the health care organisation is first taken into consideration (Sheward et al 2005). Consequently, the surgical wards nurse staffing levels are experiencing severe shortage of nurses with increased workload causing “burnout” and high

Patients are the most important piece of the healthcare system and their safety is of the utmost importance. The safety and satisfaction of patients is most directly affected by the work of nurses. Patient and family satisfaction is also shown to improve with more hours of nursing care per day and with registered nurses staffed versus other assistive personnel (Unruh, 2008). When a unit is understaffed, such as this ICU, how are nurses supposed to increase their hours of care per patient when they are asked to care for increasing numbers of high acuity patients? The decrease in nursing care time due to understaffing also causes a rise in hospital acquired infections including, but not limited to, UTI’s,

Surgical site infections are considered preventable. Because such infections are considered preventable, there are legal consequences directly connected to such a condition. In this paper, I will discuss what an SSI is and the reasons on why it is considered to be preventable. I will also discuss the role of disclosure and legal implications that are related to SSIs, accreditation expectations, and continuous quality monitoring as it relates to SSIs.

Hospitals nationwide are experiencing nurse shortage and increased workloads because of shorter hospital stays, fewer support resources and higher acuity in patients (Vahey, D. C., Aiken, L. H., Sloane, D. M., Clarke, S. P., & Vargas, D., 2004). Higher nurse workloads are directly associated with job burnout and job dissatisfaction which in turn causes more voluntary nurse turnover and relates to the increased nursing shortage. According to the Missouri Hospital Association the turnover rate of nurses has increased by fourteen percent in the last five years (Browning M., 2012). Nursing shortage is a real threat to the patient population. According to the Quality Health Outcomes Model by the American Academy of Nursing by Donabedian, effects of the healthcare interventions are characterized by the environment the staff works in (Vahey et al., 2004). Donabedian describes that quality metrics can be divided into three broad categories, structural, process, and clinical.

Those who incorporate the best practice standards can reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with surgical site infections.