Advocacy Through Health Care Policy

Running head: ADVOCACY THROUGH HEALTH CARE POLICY 1
Advocacy Through Health Care Policy
Student’s Name
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ADVOCACY THROUGH HEALTH CARE POLICY 2
Advocacy Through Health Care Policy
Introduction
Nursing staffing policy is an ideal approach to assist in the increase of quality care to
patients. The ratio of one nurse for every five patients ensures that each patient is accorded
enough medical attention. Fagin (2001) contributes to the fact that nurses can detect early signs
and symptoms of illnesses affecting the patient due to lessened work-load. In the case of two
intensive care patients, regular monitoring of their progress contributes to their quick recovery.
How the policy addresses staffing requirements
The policy sets the requirements of one nurse to six patients which create the conditions
for the nurse to balance energy resources towards the number of patients without burnout. Such
requirements allow hospital to distribute nurses within the facility according to the workload of
each station (Aiken et al., 2010). Aiken et al. (2010) suggests that the study focused on
addressing the link between nurse challenges to the quality of work that they perform on patients.
The study was based on 168 hospitals in Pennsylvania where it was discovered that the chances
of patient mortality increased with the additional workload that nurses encountered. Further,
Coffman (2002) reported that additional patients to every nurse created a workload with
increased burnout on the nurses of 23% and affected the level of patient satisfaction within the
facility. These results indicate the need to reduce the nurse-patient ratio and set the minimum to
achieve the required levels. Therefore, the role of the policy is to achieve required patient nurse
ratio to increase quality of care from nurses and reduce nurse burnout.
How the policy does an effective job in addressing staffing requirements