Fred Hechinger's "They Tortured My Mother, " Suzanne Gordon's "What Nurses Stand for, " George Simpson's "The War Room at Bellevue"

Over the last decades both public and private hospitals have been experiencing severe financial situations (Everhart, Neff, Al-Amin, Nogle, & Weech-Maldonado, 2013). The financial shortage is associated with delay or even lack of governmental sponsorship and competition from their rivals. Enacting the policy will mount financial pressure on these hospitals that are on cost-cutting strategies. The salaries and wages of nurses are dominating the costs of operation in the hospitals and therefore adding more staff to correct the understaffing will be like creating another problem (Goddard, 2003). Contrary, Empirical studies prove that adequate nurse staffing produces better outcomes for both the staffs and the patients (Donaldson & Shapiro, 2010). These do not mean that the financial performance of the health centers will be at stake. Quality is associated with profitability. Understaffing leads to increased workloads, fatigue and job dissatisfaction. These situations that can be corrected on the implementation of proper staffing policies (Everhart, Neff, Al-Amin, Nogle, & Weech-Maldonado, 2013). The policy aims at offering quality service, reasonable patient-doctor ratios, reducing high mortality rates, improving the health of patients through proper examination and disease diagnosis among other

When people think about nurses, many ideas come to mind. They think of the hideous old starched, white uniforms, a doctor’s handmaiden, the sexy or naughty nurse, or a torturer. The media and society have manipulated the identity and role of nurses. None of these ideas truly portray nurses and what they do. Nurses are with the patients more than the doctors. People do not realize how little they will encounter the doctor in the hospital until they are actually in the hospital. People quickly realize how important nurses are. Because nurses interact with their patients constantly, nurses are the ones who know the patients best.

The Institute of Medicine’s 2010 report on The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health acknowledges the changing healthcare sector in the US and describes future vision of healthcare and the role of nurses to fulfill that vision. The United States always strives to provide affordable and quality healthcare to the entire population of the country. In order to achieve this goal an overall restructuring of the healthcare system was necessitated. Nurses are considered to be the central part of the healthcare system to provide high quality and safe patient care. Nursing in the US is the single largest segment of the healthcare workforce with almost 3 million nurses working in different areas across the county. The changing

Inconsistent nurse-patient ratios are a concern in hospitals across the nation because they limit nurse’s ability to provide safe patient care. Healthcare professionals such as nurses and physicians agree that current nurse staffing systems are inadequate and unreliable and not only affect patient health outcomes, but also create job dissatisfaction among medical staff (Avalere Health, 2015). A 2002 study led by RN and PhD Linda Aiken suggests that "forty percent of hospitals nurses have burnout levels that exceed the norms for healthcare workers" (Aiken, Clarke, Sloane, Sochalski & Silber, 2002). These data represents the constant struggle of nurses when trying to provide high quality care in a hospital setting.

Resources that relate to patient care have been cut, such as lacking an adequate supply of clean linens on weekends and nights for patient rooms. While resources relating to patient care have been cut, the CEO’s salary went up from $800,000 to $1,100,000 this past year. Nurses have mobilized and created a voice for themselves and are pushing to unionize with the California Nurses Association (CNA) to fight for more resources and better wages. Since the protesting and unionizing rallies, Huntington has hired expensive anti-union companies to surveillance, intimidate, question nurses and try to divide and oppress the unionizing efforts of the California Nurses Association (CNA).

A significant amount of individuals experience job insecurity and are not satisfied with the job markets. Jobs in healthcare have taken a turn and seems to be dramatically downsizing. In the early to the middle of the 1990s, the health care sector in several countries engaged in restructuring and downsizing efforts to contain costs. Currently, health care was is the largest budget item in almost all countries. It is projected to increase in size as the population ages. Hospitals have become targets for cost reductions. Health care restructuring and downsizing are associated with greater job insecurity, low job satisfaction, higher levels of burnout, greater psychological distress, heavier workloads, greater attrition among nursing staff, lower

The issue of healthcare personnel scarcity continues to be an ongoing challenge across the globe. Invariably, nurses are at the pinnacle in the delivery of quality care in any healthcare setting. The ever-increasing demands for care stem from a patient populace that is emergent, growing older and needing more care due to the escalating shift in their disease process. Hence, nurses are torn between balancing an overloaded schedule, working extra hours and maintaining astuteness and professionalism. This transcends to compromised patient care, nursing burnout makes it difficult for them to experience the rewards of caring for patients in the way they had expected; thereby, adding to the shortage of

In recent years, the healthcare industry has seen a significant decline in the quality of patient care it provides. This has been the result of reduced staffing levels, overworked nurses, and an extremely high nurse to patient ratio. The importance of nurse staffing in hospital settings is an issue of great controversy. Too much staff results in costs that are too great for the facility to bear, but too little staffing results in patient care that is greatly hindered. Moreover, the shaky economy has led to widespread budget cuts; this, combined with the financial pressures associated with Medicare and private insurance companies have forced facilities to make due with fewer

The financial cost of losing a single nurse has been calculated as equal to double the annual salary of a single nurse. Various studies reveal that each hospital in America is losing almost $300, 000 per year because of nurse turn-over. Nurse turn-over can negatively impact the health care system in many ways such as poor quality of patient care, increased medication error, hospital acquired infection, prolonged patient stay at hospital, and increased staffing cost. Many factors contribute to nurse turn-over such as workload, absence of career opportunities, poor work recognition, and lack of communication with management about issues (Hunt, 2009).

Healthcare Reform has been and still is a highly debated controversial political issue in this country. It has been a hot topic of past presidential campaigns, with many proposed solutions, none of which were enacted upon by Congress. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in 2010. This law or Obamacare, as it is commonly called, was designed to cover the 48 million Americans, including about 1 million in New Jersey who did not have health insurance. It is envisioned to provide seamless, affordable, quality care that is accessible to all. Great emphasis will be placed on transforming our current “sick care” hospital system into a community “health care” system of prevention and health promotion. This paper discusses the evolving and future roles of nurses under the new system. It also examines the proposals of a joint committee made up of members of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), as an initiative to help nurses in their new leadership roles to a healthier nation.

The mission is successful negotiation of fair wages, safe working conditions and exemplary patient care. Can the nation’s labor unions help nursing healthcare professionals meet these mission goals? Battles are currently being fought to preserve and reform the Nation’s healthcare system. Along with proposed changes to the affordability and accessibility of medical care, healthcare providers will be faced with challenges of patient-to-provider ratios, rising costs, falling salaries/benefits and change in patient care roles. Will quality care be provided and will the

Nurse turnover is defined as “the number of nurses changing jobs within an organization or leaving an organization within a given year” (Baumann 2010). Retaining nurses is one of the most important issues in health care as its effects range from challenges in human resource planning, to high costs in financial and organizational productivity (Beecroft et al, 2008), to workgroup processes and morale, to patient safety and quality of care (i.e. patient satisfaction, length of patient stay, patient falls, and medication errors) (Bae et al, 2010). Nursing Solutions Inc (NSI) reported the national average turnover rate for hospitals increased from 13.5% in 2012 to 14.7% last year. Nurses working in Med/Surg had more turnover

You are probably drawn to what I previously mentioned as “jobless medical professionals” being half of our business. The New York Times illustrated the future of the medical field as experiencing a bottleneck effect in regards to the number of medical school graduates compared to available jobs due to

Currently, nations are keen on cutting down costs, and to achieve this constant layoffs and hiring freezes are common practices. Although, this targets most professions, nursing forms the easiest target given that the profession is one of the largest budgets in the health care profession (Hendren, 2011). This creates fear among nurses and threatens their career as they have to struggle against the overwhelming wave of layoffs and job freezes. It is paramount that organizations get suppler with scheduling and staffing while coming up with innovative ways of reducing costs without compromising the quality of health care that patients get. These organizations should also adopt flexibility and change, which is a useful

The image that people often have of nurses as acute care handmaidens"¦. Is so out of date and inaccurate that it may impede the nation's ability to harness the expertise and vision of these professionals in ways that can produce the needed improvements in the