Staffing and Scheduling The debate on safe and adequate nurse staffing has remained a growing and controversial issue in healthcare. The most important issue is determining a safe number of nurses that should ideally work on a unit. In an article by The Journal of Nursing Administration it is stated that, “over the course of the last decade, hospital restructuring, spurred in part by a move to managed care payment structures and development of market competition among health care delivery organizations, led to aggressive cost cutting. Human resources, historically a major cost center for hospitals, and nurse staffing in particular, were often the focus of work redesign and workforce …show more content…
This of course does not include the charge nurse; so therefore, a better number might be a 40 or 41 nurse total (Huber, 2010). Although I have made the calculations, it is worthwhile discuss the definitions of the variables within the calculation. For example, the variable FTE calculation is the way in which one derives the full time equivalents or employees necessary to achieve a given workload. The census/nursing hours FTE calculation is the second value I determined and involves more understanding of actual FTE productivity. Using the variable FTE calculation, I determined that 39.5 FTEs are necessary per day excluding the charge nurse. The former calculation (39.5) was larger, and I believe the calculations are different because the variable FTE has less nonproductive time included in the calculation. As I mentioned above, I would ask for the greater number of FTEs. I would arrange a meeting with the Chief Nurse by discussing the concerns of my staff regarding patient safety. I would also cite recent studies to rationalize the need for more FTEs. The first study out of the University of Pennsylvania looked at nurse “burn-out” and increased rate of patient infection. In the study, each nurse cared for an average of 5.7 patients. There were 8.6 catheter-related urinary tract infections for every 1,000 patients statewide. Adding one patient to a nurse 's
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.
Stanton, M. R. (2004, March). Hospital Nurse Staffing and Quality of Care. Research in Action. Rockville, MD, USA: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
As an NP I would choose to take care of 24-patients-per-day and have 141,887 left
Providing the best care to each patient starts with providing the proper amount of staff members to each unit. Looking at the needs of different units not only allows administration to see areas for improvement, but also areas that are being handled correctly. Utilizing the indicators provided by The Joint Commission, 4 East, a pediatric medical/surgical floor, has a high rate of falls and nosocomial pressure ulcers that appears to be related to the increase overtime nurses have been working for that floor (Nightingale, 2010). Research has shown increases in adverse events have been related to nurses working over 40 hours a week (Bae, 2012).
Mandatory staffing ratios have been suggested as a way to meet nursing staffs’ concerns of high nurse to patient ratios. Mandatory staffing ratios are used as a way to reduce workload and patient mortality and are aimed at addressing the perceived imbalance between patient needs and nursing resources. (American Nursing Association, 2014). However, issues have been raised on applicability of staffing ratios since it could lead to increased costs without the guarantee of improvement in the quality of health care and could also lead to unintended consequences including unit closures, limited infrastructural development and limited access by patients (American Nursing Association, 2014).
Each facility has their specific way of scheduling and protocol for staffing; not every facility uses a model that has other nurses’ help decide the next shifts nursing assignment. Some places will have a separate person makes the assignments and determine which nurse will get which patients during each shift, this can lead to the issue of the person making the assignments not knowing specifics and the level of care needed for each individual patient. In some cases a nurse may only have a few patients and another nurse has double as many. The level of care each individual patient needs is a huge aspect to take into consideration, making pervious nurses
Skeptics and believers alike encounter a variety of questions about Christianity. Whether those questions are the person’s own or are asked of them by someone else, the exploration of how to answer questions about faith, the Bible, and a Christian worldview is often a defining factor in what an individual believes. Timothy Keller’s book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism attempts to answer these questions thoroughly and completely in order to convince the skeptic and affirm the believer.
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
Nurse staffing refers to the ratio of nurses to patients in a particular unit. The current global nursing shortage is simply wide spread and dangerous lace of skilled nurses who are needed to care for individual patients and the population as a while. A study on the nursing shortage by Linda Aiken of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, fund that an estimated 20,000 people die each year, because they have checked into a hospital with overworked nurses. (The American Nurses Association, Inc., 2010).
Staffing needs affect the nursing department’s budget, staff productivity, the quality of care provided to patients and even the retention of nurses (Jooste, 2013). The nurse manager has to explain to the management of the benefits of change in providing adequate staffing all the time. Adequate staffing helps staff retention. Staff retention saves a lot of money in terms of orienting new people to the unit. Safe staffing always helps in the reduction of falls, infection rates, pressure ulcers, decrease hospital stays and death. Flexible and creative scheduling is essential for retaining staff and promoting a positive work climate (Grohar-Murray & Langan, 2011). Adequate staffing with good staffing ratio will help nurses to concentrate on their patient care which may help in a reduction in medical errors and lawsuits to the hospital.
In recent years, laws concerning marijuana has seen some dramatic and controversial changes. A British journalist named Johann Hari decided he try to get to the roots of the drug war to find answers to help those affected by the drug war which he loved. He wrote the book ‘Chasing the Scream The first and Last Days of The War on Drugs’, which condensed all the results of his research. This book has received much praise since its publishing and makes many valid points concerning the drug war. Another book titled, Drug War Crimes the Consequences of Prohibition, by Jeffery A. Miron, discusses and compares the benefits and detriment of prohibition of alcohol with prohibition of drugs. These two books capture many important views and evidence that
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?
Animal Farm is a satirical novel from George Orwell. Animal farm is a Throughout the novel Orwell illustrates through the use of characters and their actions the many problems associated with power. An important idea in Animal Farm is that you cannot take power away without becoming power itself. An example of this in the novel is when the animals take over the farm and plan to be equal but over time it is obvious that Napoleon and the other pigs started gaining more power within the farm. Another example of this in the book is at the end of the novel when the pigs are going against their own principles of animalism and acting like humans, the other animals started noticing the power that Napoleon and the other pigs had gained and how
Nurse staffing and how it relates to the quality of patient care has been an important issue in the field of nursing for quite some time. This topic has been particularly popular recently due to the fact that there is an increasing age among those who make up the Baby Boomer era in the United States. There will be a greater need for nurse staffing to increase to help accommodate the higher demand of care. Although nursing is “the top occupation in terms of job growth,” there are still nursing shortages among various hospitals across America today. The shortage in nurses heavily weighs on the overall quality of care that each individual patient receives during their hospital stay (Rosseter, 2014).
A continuous concern that continues to present itself within the healthcare environment is adequate staffing on nursing units. Most hospital organizations try their very best to accommodate staffing needs, though many units remain understaffed for an unspecified amount of time. Inadequate staffing can negatively affect patient outcomes, lead to nurse burnout, and decrease patient satisfaction scores. Combating this issue will require a great deal of effort, as many geographical face nursing shortages when seeking new graduates and qualified candidates. Employees may begin to feel that they are unable to pursue personal goals within a healthcare organization, due to inability to transfer as a result of staffing shortages. This often results in nursing seeking employment or career advancement outside of the organization or geographical area, which further intensifies ramification associated with inadequate staffing.