Policy To Address Nurse Staffing

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Policy To Address Nurse Staffing

To develop any policy to address nursing burnout, there are many factors that need to be considered. When staffing ratios are too high it effects the quality of patient care, and therefor affects patient satisfaction (Ezenwaji, Eseadi, Okide, Nwosu, Ololo, Oforka, & Oboegbulem, 2019). Lack of proper equipment, or even properly working equipment makes a nurse’s job more difficult, affects the quality of patient care, and increases nurses’ stress. After dealing with covid for the last year, a new concern causing nurse burnout is it quantity of acutely ill patients being given to undertrained nurses (Rosa, 2020). Cost is another big consideration because it costs a company tens of thousands of dollars to train new nurses when the old ones leave (Kelly, Gee & Butler, 2021). All these concerns are going to affect the development of any new policies Policy To Address Nurse Staffing .

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When attempting to develop a policy for burnout, all these items need to be addressed, and there are many more that can be added to this. As previously stated, in this last year, things have changed. A survey done recently of nurses that have been dealing with this pandemic, shows that as many as two-thirds of nurses are considering leaving their jobs (Rosa, 2020). Policy, or rather policies, need to address these topics if they are to be successful.

A starting point would be a policy to address staffing and acuity levels. If a nurse has a patient that is critically ill, that nurse should not have six patients because there is no realistic way, they can give safe, appropriate care to all of them. Another policy could address how nurses are floated to other units. No nursing staff should be floated to higher level acuity floors if they do not have some sort of additional training. This is a safety issue for the nurse and the patient, it is also a cause for extra stress. For instance, floating med-surg nurses to covid units to care for patients that are on drips and ventilators is dangerous for both the nurses and the patients.  A personal experience where I work is that an entire unit quit, that is more than 30 staff members leaving because their staff kept being sent to units that they were not prepared to work in, at the same time, this was leaving their own unit very understaffed. If at the very least it costs roughly 11,000 dollars to train a new nurse or CNA, then that means the company is now looking at spending around 330,000 dollars to replace that staff (Kelly et al., 2021). No one policy will fix everything, but everything needs to be considered when management is planning a new policy.

References

Ezenwaji, I. O., Eseadi, C., Okide, C. C., Nwosu, N. C., Ugwoke, S. C., Ololo, K. O., Oforka, T. O., & Oboegbulem, A. I. (2019). Work-related stress, burnout, and related sociodemographic factors among nurses: Implications for administrators, research, and policy. Medicine, 98(3), e13889. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1097/MD.0000000000013889

Kelly, L. A., Gee, P. M., & Butler, R. J. (2021). Impact of nurse burnout on organizational and position turnover. Nursing Outlook, 69(1), 96–102. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2020.06.008

Rosa, W. E. (2020). A blueprint for leadership during COVID-19: Minimizing burnout and moral distress among the nursing workforce. Nursing Management, 51(8), 28–34. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1097/01.NUMA.0000688940.29231.6f Policy To Address Nurse Staffing

Module 2: wk3 assignment due 3/20

Assignment: Developing Organizational Policies and Practices

Competing needs arise within any organization as employees seek to meet their targets and leaders seek to meet company goals. As a leader, successful management of these goals requires establishing priorities and allocating resources accordingly.

Within a healthcare setting, the needs of the workforce, resources, and patients are often in conflict. Mandatory overtime, implementation of staffing ratios, use of unlicensed assisting personnel, and employer reductions of education benefits are examples of practices that might lead to conflicting needs in practice.

Leaders can contribute to both the problem and the solution through policies, action, and inaction. In this Assignment, you will further develop the white paper you began work on in Module 1 by addressing competing needs within your organization.

To Prepare:

  • Review the national healthcare issue/stressor you examined in your Assignment for Module 1, and review the analysis of the healthcare issue/stressor you selected.
  • Identify and review two evidence-based scholarly resources that focus on proposed policies/practices to apply to your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
  • Reflect on the feedback you received from your colleagues on your Discussion post regarding competing needs  Policy To Address Nurse Staffing