Nurse To Patient Ratios

The economic impact on healthcare has taken its toll on the number of registered nurses providing bedside care to patients, compromising patient safety and dramatically increasing the potential for negative outcomes. Several factors have immensely contributed to the nursing shortages over the years, including healthcare organizations downsizing, increased workloads, inadequate staffing plans and job dissatisfaction. Mandated nurse-to-patient staffing ratios have been implemented in several states to date with many more trying to pass some type of legislation. Have these ratios affected the quality of care or is it more realistic to create staffing committees that are based on each unit’s unique situation and varying requirements?

Since the times when Florence Nightingale took care of patients, there has been a question about what factors affect patient care. One of these factors, nurse-to-patient ratios, has gotten significant publicity over the last several years due to a change in legislation in California. This increase in publicity has sparked many researchers' interest to further evaluate these ratios in connection with patient outcomes and other variables. Through lots of research and analysis there is evidence that a lower nurse-to-patient ratio does reduce the negative patient outcomes in patient care. Some of these

The nurse manager in today’s health care has a solid role in providing a healthy working environment. Healthy working environment is the basis for safe and better patient outcomes. Healthy working environment in a unit depends on the inspiration, motivation and support from the nurse manager and the management in all the ways. So as a nurse manager in a unit, the change I wish to initiate is the safe staffing patterns. Safe staffing patterns are always important for safe working environments to deliver excellent patient care. Staffing and scheduling means providing an adequate staff mix to meet the needs of the patients (Grohar-Murray & Langan, 2011). Nurse manager should know how to schedule and skill mix to provide adequate

Mandatory nurse-patient ratios have been a controversial topic facing nurses for decades. Nurses, patients, physicians, nursing organizations, researchers, hospitals, federal government, and state governments have opposing views in regard to mandatory nurse-patient ratios. Those that support the idea of mandatory nurse-patient ratios believe that there would be an improvement in quality of patient care, decreased nursing shortages, increased job satisfaction, decreased client hospitalization, and increased nurse recruitment (Pamela Tevington, 2012). Groups that oppose mandatory nurse-patient ratios believe that mandatory staffing laws ignore factors such as the level of care a patient requires from a nurse, treatments, length of hospitalization, improvements and differences in technology, the expense of an increased nursing staff, and nurse experience and education (Tevington, 2012).

For over a decade researchers have been performing studies examining the effects patient-to-nurse ratios have on adverse outcomes, mortality rates, and failure-to-rescue rates of patients and on job dissatisfaction and burnout experiences of nurses. Aiken, Sloane, Sochalski, and Silber (2002) performed a study which showed that each additional patient per nurse increased patient mortality within 30 days of admission by 7% and increased failure-to-rescue by 7% as well. This same study also showed that each additional patient per nurse resulted in a 23% increase in nurse burnout and a 15% increase in job dissatisfaction. Additionally, Rafferty et al. (2007) performed a study in which the results showed that patients in hospitals with higher patient-to-nurse ratios had a 26% higher mortality rate and nurses were twice as likely to have job dissatisfaction and experience burnout. Blegen, Goode, Spetz, Vaughn, and Park (2011) performed a study where results showed that more staffing hours for nurses resulted in lower rates of congestive heart failure morality, infection, and prolonged hospital stays. The same study also showed that increased nursing care from registered nurses resulted in lower infection and failure to rescue rates and fewer cases of sepsis.

The purpose of this article is to discuss appropriate nurse staffing and staffing ratios and its impact on patient care. Although the issue is just not about numbers as we discuss staffing we begin to see how complex the issue has become over the years. Many factors can affect appropriate nurse staffing ratios. As we investigate nurse staffing ratios we can see the importance of finding the right mix and number of nurses to provide quality care for patients.

The salary of a dental hygienist is approximately $73,000 a year and $34.77 and hour which is a good amount of money for the amount of work that you are assigned to do on a daily routine but that could be the pay that they get in big cities or in other states. When I am done with college instead of returning back to the small town of Hallettsville I would like to move to around Houston since they have tons of jobs dealing with dental and lots of people that go to the dentist every six months to get their teeth cleaned and I have heard that there is higher paying jobs in bigger cities and I would not want to live in a town with only about 2,500 people living in it, even though it's easy to get to know people I just want to be in a more populated town than the one I grew up

Determining nurse-to-patient ratios in nursing facilities remains a challenge for the nursing profession. Two main staffing methods that are currently used in most nursing facilities are staffing by patient acuity using patient classification systems and staffing by mandated nurse-to-patient rations. Each method has an impact on patient outcomes, safety and overall satisfaction determined from different articles and studies done on each staffing method. There are pros and cons to each staffing methods. Nursing facilities look at many of these pros and cons when determining staffing methods that are used, cost, patient outcomes, nursing satisfaction and

The California law has a relatively brief history, starting with the passing of AB 394 in 1999, when the state established the idea of nurse-to-patient ratios before working out the details of implementation or the actual ratio parameters.

I chose three jobs of COO (Chief Operating Officer), HRIS (Human Resource Information Systems) Manager, and Customer Service Representative, and I studied these three jobs’ salary in Boston MA. COO is paid the highest, its median annual salary is $455,864. Then is HRIS Manager with a median annual salary of $113,583. Customer Service Representative gets the lowest payment, $35,250 as a median annual salary. This rank is exact what I expected, because COO requires much higher educational level and years of experience than the other two, and Customer Service Representative is only an entry level job.

Nurse staffing have an effect on a variety of areas within nursing. Quality of care is usually affected. Hospitals with low staffing tend to have higher incidence of poor patient outcomes. Martin, (2015) wrote an article on how insufficient nursing staff increases workload and job dissatisfaction, which in effect decreases total patient care over all. When nurse staffing is inadequate, the ability to practice ethically becomes questionable. Time worked, overtime, and total hours per week have significant effect on errors. When nurses works long hours, the more likely errors will be made. He also argued that inadequate staffing not only affects their patients but also their loved ones, future and current nursing staff, and the hospitals in which they are employed. An unrealistic workload may result in chronic fatigue, poor sleep patterns, and absenteeism thus affecting the patients they take care of.

Which comes back, that there are many reasons why San Francisco has the higher pay rate in the Bay Area than other cities. Two of the multiple reasons why San Francisco is the city that pays the most for Dental Assisting in the Bay Area is the amount of population that attracts or consists of, and the minimum wage is considerably higher than other cities in the Bay Area. San Francisco has an abundant amount

Outside Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, the largest nurses strike in U.S. history occurred. Over 12,000 Minnesota nurses went on strike, standing up for patient care and themselves. The nurses advocated for healthcare reform in which there should be a strict nurse-to-patient ratio. In response, the hospitals hired over 2,800 replacement nurses and temporarily reduced patient levels. This however, caused a rippling effect in which thousands of nurses around the country have planned and created strikes of their own. With the help of non-violence protesting, drastic improvements are being made within the healthcare system to this day as a result. At the majority of hospitals in the

Despite many efforts to improve staffing numbers, there is often still a staff shortage among staff in hospitals and acute care settings. While the most obvious solution to short staffing is to hire more nurses, there are also other ways to make staffing more effective. A patient acuity tool is a staffing instrument that can be used to decide how much time and attention each individual patient requires. By knowing the acuity level of each patient, charge nurses can decide how many patients each nurse can be assigned to at a time. This essay describes the way a patient acuity instrument improves healthcare outcomes by promoting patient-centered care and improving on key nurse competencies including teamwork and collaboration, quality improvement, and safety measures.

The constant problem that nurses have is having a low staffing rate which can lead to bigger problems in the end. They are not always treated good so they end up leaving their job when they shouldn’t even have to go through all of this at work. This includes everyone in the workplace, even patients and co-workers and you would think that the patients would be nice to their nurses when they are just trying to care of them. Their bosses overwork them without giving out long breaks which can lead to the nurses have back problems or just being so exhausted. Not having long breaks or at least a 30 minute break could also lead to having problems with their joints then they would have to miss work. If they miss work then they miss out on the money