Managing Staff Shortage in Healthcare: Challenges, Impact, and Solutions

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Management
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1MANAGEMENT
Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Current state of staff shortage:.........................................................................................................2
Importance of staffing in health care setting:..................................................................................3
Impact of the shortage on the health care organization:..................................................................5
Current challenges facing nursing leadership in the setting:...........................................................6
Solutions to overcome the challenge:..............................................................................................8
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................................10
Recommendation:..........................................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction:
The modern health care system is constantly changing and evolving. As the current health
care system has become complex and multifaceted, there is a need for dynamic and inspiring
nursing leadership to meet the demands of care. Effective nursing leadership has the potential to
create a productive and efficient workforce. With the use of their analytical and problem solving
skills, nurse leader plays a role in giving direct guidance to nurse and collaborating with staffs,
management and executive team to supervise the delivery of high quality care (Scully 2015).
Understanding of key aspects of nursing leadership and management is important for nurse
leaders to effectively apply theories in real practice based setting. A nurse leader has to deal with
several aspects in practice and these may include transforming education, bringing a planned
change, implementing ethics, quality control and managing staffing. Based on my personal
experience of working as a manager in the gynecology ward of King Faisal hospital, I feel that
staffing is an important aspect of nursing leadership. Shortage of staff was a major issue in the
hospital and this created many challenges for nurse leaders. The main purpose of this paper is to
review the issue of staffs shortage at King Faisal hospital and critically analyze the impact of
staff shortage by applying nursing leadership and management theories. The paper also provides
solutions to overcome the issue of staff shortage and improve the quality of care in the selected
organization.
Current state of staff shortage:
King Faisal Hospital is a modern tertiary care hospital located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Currently the ward does not have adequate number of staffs to handle patients. Due to staff
shortage issue, the staffs at the gynecology ward of the hospital have to go through stressful

3MANAGEMENT
environment (King Faisal Specialist Hospital 2019). The nursing staffs at the hospital face the
direct consequences of staff shortage. They work for longer hours and they have a very schedule
throughout the day. The maximum shift hours for nurse have been 15 hours per day. Although
the facilities provide to the recruited staffs are adequate, however long working hours has been
identified as one significant issue that can seriously hamper quality of care and staff’s motivation
to work at the hospital too. Unless the issue of staff shortage is addressed, realizing the goal and
vision of the organization must be difficult. Hence, from the perspective of a nurse leader or
manager, recruitment and retention of professional staffs is one of the serious challenges while
working at King Faisal Hospital. Because of several negative effect of staff shortage, enhancing
recruitment and staff development has become one of the strategic priorities of the hospital. The
main goal is to promote welfare and satisfaction of employees both in workplace and social
setting and enhance staff retention process (King Faisal Specialist Hospital 2019).
Importance of staffing in health care setting:
Health care staffing is an area which has become a critical area of focus for
leaders and management of health care setting. The main rationale behind this is the link between
staffing level and patient satisfaction. This is because staffing is directly linked to patient
outcome. An observational study has revealed that nurse work environment and percentage of
nurses in hospital is associated with patient mortality, as improved nurse staffing reduce the rate
of preventable in-hospital deaths (Cho et al. 2015). As nurse-patient ratio is maintained, higher
level of staffing minimizes the number of care left undone and increase patient satisfaction
(Peršolja 2018). These evidences further indicates that nursing management efforts for higher
number of registered nurse in hospital setting is the pathway to improving patient satisfaction
and achieving the goal of quality care. For King Faisal Hospital, the increase in value of staffing