Occupational Hazards Of The Nursing Profession Essay

In the past two decades, there has been a push for appropriate staff to client ratios. However, measuring client needs and nursing efforts have been around since 1922 (Lewinski-Corwin, 1922, pp. 603-606). The earliest recorded effort was by the New York Academy of Medicine. Superintendents and nurses from ten training schools documented the time spent providing bedside care. From complied information, the researchers revealed each client required an average of five hours and four minutes of care in a 24-hour period. From these observations, they evaluated staffing issues in New York City. At that time, none of the hospitals were sufficiently staffed (Lewinski-Corwin, 1922, pp. 603-606).

With regard to sleepiness, several studies indicated that the average of sleep duration in 1910 to 2002 have decreased from 9 to 6 hours on workdays (National sleep foundation, 2002; Groger et al., 2004). Recently, a survey study of Roger et al. (2004) shows that an American Nurses have an average of 84 minutes more sleep on non workdays. Thus, shift work suggested as a cause of sleeping disorder among nurses where they feel of sleep during the shift. Considering the contributing factors of sleepiness, the literature identified that long working hours and rotating shifts are causing sleeping disorder. In the night and rotating shifts, the nurses are rarely obtained adequate amount of sleep. In fact, the nurses experiencing less sleeping hours (1 to 4 hour) than normal sleeping (Zeisler et al.,1980). Nevertheless, insufficient sleep is a significant reason of damaging planning, decision-making, and integration of information (Krueger, 1994; Harrison and Horne, 2000). More recent studies have revealed that long hour shifts and overtime are strongly linked to the difficulties of being a wake through the shift which leads to increase the risk of making an error (Scott et al., 2006; Roger et al., 2004).

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how safety in the nursing profession affects the nursing education, nursing practice, and nursing research. Safety in the nursing profession means to minimize the risk of harm to patients and providers through both system effectiveness and individual performances (QSEN, 2014). Patient safety is a very important aspect in the profession of nursing. It is the nurse’s job to keep up to date with their patients and to make sure that protocol is being followed at all times. To maintain this strategy, the nurse must show proper knowledge of a nurse, skills of a nurse, and also a professional attitude.

Another cause of nurse fatigue is lack of adequate sleep. First, working 12 hour shifts means that nurses only have 12 hours to sleep and also conduct other activities of life outside the workplace, while other professionals have 16 or more hours for rest and social activities. This is the reason for the few hours of sleep recorded by nurses with some opting to not sleep at all but take short naps. These are

Purpose: The purpose of this speech is to inform my audience about the importance of safe nurse staffing that can help improve patient satisfaction, decrease patient complications, reduce nurse fatigue, improve nurse retention, decrease patient mortality, and reduce medical and medication error.

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

When nurses experience fatigue due to excessive overtime, effects that can occur are reduced decision making ability, reduced communication skills, increased forgetfulness, increased tendency of risk taking, reduced ability to handle stress on the job, decreased ability to do complex planning, and inability to recall details which can all danger patients wellbeing. Unfortunately even with all the

Within the recent years, hospitals and medical facilities have been experiencing nursing shortages that necessitate more nurses to be present to compensate for the care needed to be given. This requires nurses to be dealt with imperative extended work hours along with their normal shifts with no denial or excuse accepted. Working extra hours are accompanied with negative effects that have an impact on the nurse, coworkers, and patients. A major concern that occurs with overtime is that nurses become fatigued or burnout. Fatigue that is experienced is a result of sleep deprivation from working overtime that is associated with arduousness neurobehavioral functioning

Nurses find themselves in the middle of a complex health care system between the financial side and patient safety. A professional nurse’s goal is to provide safe, quality, patient care. However, nurses often fail to meet this goal due to the variability in patient acuity, the unpredictable workload of nurses, and institutional budget constraints (ANA, 2014). According to the American Nurses Association (2014) research shows that lower staffing levels of registered nurses correlate with poor patient outcomes, as well as negative nurse outcomes, such as physical injury and ‘burnout.’

increased workload and long shift hours causes fatigue and causes nurses to rush and as a result

Fatigue and sleepiness, tendency to fall asleep, go hand in hand as nurses struggle to stay awake during long, consecutive, day or night shifts. For example, in the Staff Nurse Fatigue and Patient Safety Study, the number of nurses who reported an error or a near miss had less hours of sleep than the nurses who did not report an error or a near miss, and it was determined that there is a 3.4 percent chance of a nursing error when nurses get 6 hours of sleep or less in the prior 24 hours; another study found that the chances of making an error was three times higher when nurses worked more than 12.5 hours per shift (Rogers, 2008). In the Staff Nurse Fatigue and Patient Safety Study, over two thirds of the participants reported that they struggle to stay awake while working and 20 percent reported incidence of falling asleep during their shift (Rogers, 2008). Nurses also do not get adequate breaks while working long shifts, according to the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) less than 50% of work breaks for are away from patient care, which means nurses never truly get a chance to relax (Phillips, 2014). Not only is the patient safety at risk when nurses are fatigued, but the well being of nurses is at stake as well. While nurses are fatigued they are risking their

The broad research problem leading to this study is the belief that nursing shortage in facilities leads to patient safety issues. The review of available literature on this topic shows strong evidence that lower nurse staffing levels in hospitals are associated with worse patient outcomes. Some of these outcomes include very high patient to nurse ratio, fatigue for nurses leading to costly medical mistakes, social environment, nursing staff attrition from the most affected facilities. The study specifically attempts to find a way to understand how nurse

Limited attention has been paid to the hours worked by nurses, or the effects of these hours on patient safety (Rogers, 2008). Even though most nurses favor 12- hour shifts and overtime, it is associated with difficulties staying awake during times of duty, reduced sleep times, and triple the risk of making an error (Rogers, 2008). The most significant risk of making an error occurred when nurses were scheduled to work 12.5 hours or more.

The risks of making an error were significantly increased when work shifts were longer than twelve hours, when nurses worked overtime, or when they worked more than forty hours per week. (Trossman, 2009). Working longer hours in a high stress area will always increase the error rate. Designating an adequate number of RN positions to ensure nurses work an appropriate schedule without overtime and that their workload allows for breaks. Managerial staff must work to develop specific policies about the length of work times based on the setting, patient and provider needs. Those policies should limit nurses from working more than 12.5 consecutive hours. Provide education for all care providers on the hazards and causes of fatigue. Continue to document unsafe staffing conditions and work with others to change the current work culture so that it recognizes the effects of fatigue on patient safety, as well as the nurse. (Berger, et al. 2006)

There are many different variations of healthcare professionals that assist people in regaining and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The career field of licensed nursing is often considered to be one of the most vital professions within the medical community. Registered nurses work to prevent and heal various different types of injuries, diseases, and illnesses. They are also responsible for administering a variety of patient services, consisting of individual patient care, analyzing and monitoring patient medical reports, and also possessing the ability to operate technical medical equipment. As well as, be able provide comfort and emotional support for both physically, and mentally ill patients. All Registered Nurses are responsible for providing patients with quality health care, in compliance with professional standards set forth by the American Nurses Association. As the field continues to rapidly evolve, an increase in responsibility is placed upon registered nurses to maintain a professional standard of care. With the increase in responsibility, the role of registered nurses consistently changes to accommodate individual patient needs. As a result, the rise in responsibility placed on registered nurses correlates to a higher probability of malpractice and negligence occurring within the community. The consequences of malpractice and negligence can