Excessive Workload Among Health Care Professionals: Issues and Potential Solutions

This essay discusses the issues and potential solutions related to hectic work hours and profile in health care institutions. It covers problems associated with excessive workload among health care professionals, such as deteriorating work performance and stress and employee burnout. The potential solutions discussed include training and recruitment and building a positive and supporting working environment. The essay concludes that excessive workload is a crucial issue that must be considered in enhancing the quality and scope of health care services.

COURSEWORK
ESSAY
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Problems associated with excessive workload among health care professionals............................3
Problem 1: Deteriorating work performance...............................................................................3
Problem 2: Stress and employee burnout....................................................................................4
Potential solutions........................................................................................................................5
Solution 1: Training and recruitment...........................................................................................5
Solution 2: Building a positive and supporting working environment........................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7
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INTRODUCTION
Clinical and social work demands great level of accuracy, emotional support as well as
involvement. Thus nature of health and social care is very demanding and often becomes a great
burden for the professional (Sjöberg and et.al., 2020). The excessive work related pressure not
only affect the personal aspect of workers but can also have significant professional
consequences. This essay will discuss the issues and potential solutions related to hectic
workhours and profile in health care institutions.
MAIN BODY
Problems associated with excessive workload among health care professionals
Problem 1: Deteriorating work performance
Health care work load has greater impact upon care quality, recovery and satisfaction of
patient as well as efficiency of professionals. Health care professionals are also involved
emotionally along with the professional job roles which makes them completely exhausted due
to greater involvement. With higher work pressure and load workers in this sector are not able to
effectively manage their role in multiple tasks. For instance, in order to assure the patient safety
and clinical needs nurses and care givers used to have various tasks. If they have work pressure,
then their focus and time may divide and they may neglect several important aspects of care.
These aspects may not be considered as essential part of their job role but they are significant
and can have potential impact on care outcomes (Fagerström, Kinnunen and Saarela, 2018).
Greater work load also has negative impact on decision making. Health and social care
professionals are required to take several important decisions related to care plan and patient
safety. Thus they must be deeply engaged in overall needs and history of patient. Due to heavy
work load nurses may not have detailed or required collaboration with the physicians or other
multidisciplinary teams which are important for the holistic care of patients. This can also result
in communication barriers between patients and care givers (Johnson and et.al., 2017). When
there is lack of effective and complete communication between professionals and service users
due to work load then it definitely reduces the service quality and the way in which patient
outcomes are delivered.
The increased work load also causes deterioration in the job satisfaction and motivation.
Though health care professionals are ethically indulging in their job role but when they are
forced to continuously involve in work without prioritising their personal needs and health then it
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may result in burnout (Greaves and et.al., 2018). The long working hours and never ending
expectations of people and management may deteriorate the motivation of service providers.
They may develop low morale and began to show the poor performance, absenteeism and higher
employee turnover cost. With negative association between work role professionals may feel that
their efforts are not valued and hence they may think about giving less efforts in the work. It can
have serious implications on patient satisfaction as well as job performance.
Problem 2: Stress and employee burnout
Another implications of heavy work load are observed in terms of wellbeing of staff
members. Working for long hours without necessary breaks or personal life balance staff
members may feel exhausted and stressful. Health care profession involves the critical
incidences which has significant psychological impact. Thus along with the demanding
emotional balance when nurses or other professionals does not have sufficient time to rest then it
can make them fall ill; both physically and mentally (Smith, 2019). For instance, during
pandemic management staff members were working day and night wearing protection kits
risking themselves to sweat, heat or infections. They were also threatened to protect their
families along with them from the risk of infections. In such situations along with the physical
challenges professionals also used to face emotional trauma which they have to go through when
dealing with nonstop work tasks. This burnout and stress can raise to an extent such that many
professionals used to discontinue their jobs and plans to live an ordinary life which have fixed
working hours without any ethical responsibility. Health professionals are always in dilemma
bout their ethical role and personal choices. Thus continuous emotional trauma also makes them
stressful and vulnerable to work related errors. The tiredness caused due to long working hours
or hectic work schedule in odd hours affect physical as well as cognitive abilities of
professionals (Sjöberg and et.al., 2020). Thus decisions taken by the professionals may contain
errors or irregularities. However, such irregularities are not tolerable or acceptable in critical
professionals such as health care. With heavy work load to professionals the probabilities of
knowledge errors, lapses as well as execution errors are also increased which deliberately deviate
them from standard or safe working practices (Fagerström, Kinnunen and Saarela, 2018). The
work pressure or stress can be threat-full in emergency situations and can even bring
complications for safety and wellbeing of patient. Thus it is highly required that nursing or health
care workloads must be managed suitably.
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Potential solutions
Solution 1: Training and recruitment
One of the key reasons that health care sector experiences excessive work load is that
number of trained professionals is not increasing in alignment with the ageing population or
health care needs in time of pandemic. Thus the first and most effective solution for solving the
workload issue is that there must be increased training initiatives and recruitment in this section
so that work pressure can be uniformly distributed (Fagerström, Kinnunen and Saarela, 2018).
The growth in this segment can be increased with attractive perks, benefits as well as education
programs.
This is possible only when service providing institutions have sufficient number of trained
employees. The lack of trained and effective employees also causes errors and increased pressure
on experienced peers (Watson and et.al., 2019). Thus development and implementation of
creative and productive training programs can be used as effective measure to manage the work
pressure. When recruitments will be carried out at larger scale then there will be no shortfall of
the employees. It will help to manage and distribute the workload equally among all the staff
members instead of raising work pressure on few employees. In certain situations, when
workload is increased for specific job roles then service providers can seek assistance from the
new recruitments or training initiatives for the existing workload. Health care recruitments must
be rolled out quickly so that new graduates can quickly provide their services to community. The
transition phase shift must also be smoothened by monitoring and easy transition approaches.
Solution 2: Building a positive and supporting working environment
The irregular working conditions or unnecessary administrative burden must also be reduced
by well-planned leadership initiatives. There is quick need to emphasis on management aspects
such as culture, leadership, team building as well as conflict management in health care services
as well. The emotional trauma and related challenges are hard to manage. However, if health
care professionals are given a creative and sustainable working environment for working then it
will not only improve their productivity but can also reduce employee burnout and stress. The
work related schedules must be planned in a way such that health professionals are able to
balance their personal and professional aspects and are not forced to carry the ethical and
emotional burden with them. For managing the stress and psychological trauma of health care
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professionals they must also be given counselling and communication support from leaders and
upper management.
Use of information technology can make this solution highly feasible and productive. There
are several technologies which can make the work of health professionals very easy and less time
consuming. Thus whenever possible service providers must integrate their services with smart
technologies so that along with the improved care services work load can also be managed. For
instance, with the use of smart beds, artificial intelligence based monitoring systems some of the
tasks of professionals can be managed and it will greatly reduce the burden of nursing or other
health professionals. Along with the recruitment solutions integration of technology in health
care can bring considerable difference and positivity in work load management of staff members
(Hegney and et.al., 2019). Application of these solutions to health care sector can act as effective
remedy to manage the work burden and related consequences. Use of information technology
can make it easy for the nurses or health professionals to record and track the progress the health
status of their patients. The IT systems can also ensure that work load is uniformly distributed so
that employee burnout and stress events can be overcome.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the above essay that being a crucial and critical professional,
necessary solutions must be implemented for the health care professionals. Work stress and
imbalance can lead to major health consequences as well as work productivity which is not
acceptable or good for the social wellbeing. Thus excessive workload is crucial issue which must
be considered as an important aspect in enhancing the quality and scope of health care services.
Use of technology based solutions as well as good training initiatives can help to manage the
work stress of health care professionals.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Aburayya, A., and et.al., 2020. An investigation of factors affecting patients waiting time in
primary health care centers: An assessment study in Dubai. Management Science
Letters. 10(6). pp.1265-1276.
Fagerström, L., Kinnunen, M. and Saarela, J., 2018. Nursing workload, patient safety incidents
and mortality: an observational study from Finland. BMJ open. 8(4). p.e016367.
Greaves, J., and et.al., 2018. Nursing workloads and activity in critical care: A review of the
evidence. Intensive and Critical Care Nursing, 48, pp.10-20.
Hammarberg, S.A.W., and et.al., 2019. Care managers can be useful for patients with depression
but their role must be clear: a qualitative study of GPs’ experiences. Scandinavian
Journal of Primary Health Care. 37(3). pp.273-282.
Hegney, D.G., and et.al., 2019. Perceptions of nursing workloads and contributing factors, and
their impact on implicit care rationing: a Queensland, Australia study. Journal of
Nursing Management. 27(2). pp.371-380.
Johnson, J. and et.al., 2017. Mental healthcare staff well being and burnout: A narrative review
of trends, causes, implications and recommendations for future interventions.
International Journal of Mental Health Nursing. 27.1 . PP. 20-32. [Online]. Available
at: https:// pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ 29243348/
Sjöberg, A., and et.al., 2020. The burden of high workload on the health-related quality of life
among home care workers in Northern Sweden. International archives of
occupational and environmental health. 93(6). pp.747-764.
Smith, A.P., 2019, November. Student workload, wellbeing and academic attainment.
In International symposium on human mental workload: Models and
applications (pp. 35-47). Springer, Cham.
Watson, A.G. and et.al., 2019. Impact of physician workload on burnout in the emergency
department. Psychology, Health & Medicine. 24(4). pp.414-428.
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