Impact Of Nursing Professionals On The Workplace

As a nurse we want to ensure that our patients receive a high quality of care. Patients should feel safe and satisfied while hospitalized. Many hospitals are continually looking for answers and implementation to significantly reduce the inpatient fall incidents. According to Bechdel et al (2014), the top priority of health care organizations nationwide is to reduce and eliminate falls within the clinical care settings. One of the serious problems in acute care hospital is the patient’s fall. The unfamiliar environment, acute and co-morbid illnesses, prolonged bedrest, polypharmacy, and the placement of tubes and catheters are common challenges that place patients at risk of falling. Most of the falls that I have encountered while working involves

Kalisch, Beatrice J. PhD, RN, FAAN; Tschannen, Dana PhD, RN; Lee, Kyung Hee MPH, RN (2012). Missed Nursing Care, Staffing, and Patient Falls. Journal of Nursing Care Quality: January/March 2012 - Volume 27 - Issue 1 - p 6–12 doi: 10.1097/NCQ.0b013e318225aa23.

The Nurse and Health Care Worker Protection Act of 2015, or H.R. 4266, was reintroduced to congress in December of 2015 by Representative John Conyers and Senator Al Franken (Mitchell & Dawson, 2016). It is legislation that attempts to protect patients, nurses, nurse assistants, and other healthcare workers from injuries as a result of unsafe patient handling and mobilization. Congress found that in 2014, registered nurses were the sixth largest profession who were reporting musculoskeletal disorders and injuries as a result of their employment with 11,360 cases; the second highest profession in 2014 of reported musculoskeletal injuries was nursing assistants with 20,020 cases (H.R. 4266, 2015).

Risk for trauma related to misuse of seat restraints and physical proximity to vehicle pathways.

Fry, M. (2011). Literature review of the impact of nurse practitioners in critical care services. Nursing In Critical Care, 16(2), 58-66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-5153.2010.00437.x

While working, nurses are on their feet for more than 75% time they are at work. They have to walk around from patient to patient administering drugs and care where needed. In addition, during the shift they have to make constant trips to patients depending on the times that medication is to be administered. The amount of distance that nurses cover in one shift leaves them exhausted at the end of the day or night. In addition, this means that nurses require more energy in order to function properly. In most cases, nurses rarely take time to take a snack to raise their energy levels at work. This is because there might be emergencies at work or patient needs to be met that do not allow them to take a break.

Mandating safe staffing levels for registered nurses in acute care settings has been an important topic of discussion for many years. As the demand for registered nurses continues to rise, so does the clinical demands on the nurses currently working. If there are no specific policies in place that mandate safe and appropriate nurse-to-patient ratios for all acute care facilities, registered nurses (RNs) may be required to take on even more patients than the already high numbers currently given to many of them. Inadequate RN staffing has the potential to cause increases in adverse patient events (American Nurses Association (ANA), The registered nurse safe staffing act, 2015) as well as an increase in nurse injury (Musick, Trotto, & Morrison,

Pamela F. Cipriano, President of American Nurses Association was in disbelief to see how she has tried to enforce the Nightingale pledge of keeping patients free from harm was failed because medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States. As of now ANA has conducted yearlong campaign named “Safety 360 It Starts with You” in order to reduce and take measurable advances to protect the welfare of nurses and workers. It is one of campaign that the ANA comes with that is in support to both the nurses and patients. However, in the real-world nurses are stress and fatigue due to patient ratio. In my workplace, which is a state hospital, they have full time nurses on call where nurses work more than 70 hours a week. The nurses

3432 nurses were included in this study. In addition to nurses 980 nursing assistants were participants of this study. The surveys return rate was 57.3%, some units was as high as 99.6% and as low as 34.4%. (Kalisch, Tschannen & Lee, 2012).

On December 2016, Democratic United States Representative John Conyers Jr., who represents Michigan’s 14th District, introduced national legislation for the third time that calls for a national standard for the safe handling of dependent patients and residents throughout the healthcare system. H.R. 4266, The Nurse and Health Care Worker Protection Act of 2015, directs the Secretary of Labor to issue an occupational safety and health standard to reduced injuries to patients, direct-care registered nurses and all other healthcare workers” by establishing a safe patient handling and injury prevention standard , and for other purposes” (H.R. 4266, 2015). The standard specifies “the use of engineering controls to perform lifting, transferring,

The American Nurses Association (ANA) is supporting efforts to reduce or eliminate musculoskeletal injuries associated with lifting, repositioning, and transferring patients. According to the American Nurses Association (2016), the average nurse will lift 1.8 tons per shift and over 38% of nurses will experience a back injury during his or her career. The ANA endorses legislation that requires healthcare facilities to implement the use of patient handling assistive equipment. Through this initiative, the ANA hopes to ease some of the nursing shortage issues that are compounded by work-related injuries.

When people think of the word culture they think about ethnicity and religion, but that is not the only meaning of culture. Culture can also be defined as, “The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization” (Merriam-Webster,1828). In most workplace settings, there is a workplace culture which means they go by standards that have been set for them or by them and each workplace will be different. In the nursing field culture is going to feel different in each setting, but nursing as a whole is the same at the core.

"Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing"-Theodore Roosevelt. Like Roosevelt, he saw that reflecting off hard work and spending hours interacting has an impact on the people. Nurses spend day and night helping the community and the patients. When one is in need or isn't satisfied they are there. Hard work pays off and nurses have chosen this profession to improve the quality of life for all. Nurses impact environmental health on human community through patients advocacy, informing communities/families, and keeping the environment clean.

Fatigue is defined as a feeling of weariness, tiredness, or lack of energy (Philips, 2013). Fatigue is a subjective feeling and has been described by people as “feeling tired all the time” and “feeling weak” and it can be influenced by physiological, psychological, behavioral, and environmental factors (Campbell, 2011). Nurse fatigue is an issue that has been a major concern for patient safety and the wellbeing of nurses. Nurse fatigue can be attributed to working 12-hour shifts, working night shifts, working several back-to-back shifts and working overtime (Rogers, 2008). This paper will investigate and analyze the dangers of nurse fatigue and will explore strategies for implementing changes to reduce nurse fatigue.

Tzeng and Yin (2008) state that nurses assume the responsibility and are liable when a patient falls in their care. Nurses spend the most time with patients at their bedside; however, nurses don’t have any