The Assignment on Nurse To Patient Ratio

Running head:NURSE TO PATIENT RATIO
Nurse to Patient Ratio
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author’s name

1NURSE TO PATIENT RATIO
Introduction
The American healthcare system acts more as a business industry compared to any other
healthcare system in the world. In America, the insurance companies have a substantial effect on
the patient care and on the treatments, which occurs by influencing which diagnostic tests and
which treatment cost will be reimbursed (Denton, 2018). The hospital management always keeps
a track on the budget and on the duration of stay of the patient to stay in the profitable margin
and remain viable. In American healthcare system, nursing staff are the core members.
According to a literature, the nurses are the key members who are responsible for the smooth and
effectively running of the hospital (Dousay, Childers, Cole, Hill & Rogers, 2016). Though, there
are complaints of nurses that they are generally overworked and given responsibilities of more
patients than the amount they can handle and they are underpaid. This reason has led fewer
nurses taking responsibility of more patients and as a consequence the patient care gets adversely
affected (Aiken et al., 2018).
Currently I am working for a long term care in the Transitional Care Unit (TCU) of a
healthcare organization in Minnesota in United States. I have been given the responsibility of 30
patients to take care of, and among those around 5 to 8 patients belong to the TCU. It becomes
very much challenging and hard for me to alone take care of so many patients. When taking care
of so many patients I don’t get a chance to take any break and as a result I fail to take good care
of my patients. I am always working as a nursing assistant whenever I am called for by my
superiors.

2NURSE TO PATIENT RATIO
The aim of this article is to thoroughly study the current literature regarding the nurse to
patient ratio and examine different approaches in reducing the challenging healthcare issue and
incorporate them in the healthcare organization.
Annotated Bibliography:
Lee, A., Cheung, Y. S. L., Joynt, G. M., Leung, C. C. H., Wong, W. T., & Gomersall, C. D.
(2017). Are high nurse workload/staffing ratios associated with decreased survival in
critically ill patients? A cohort study. Annals of intensive care, 7(1), 46.
Despite the key role of caregivers in intensive care, there has been no clear relationship
between the workload / personnel ratio for intensive care nurses and survival. The study has
determined whether there is a threshold workload/staffing ratio above which the likelihood of
hospital survival is reduced and the study has then shaped the relationship between exposure to
poor staffing and risk-adjusted hospital survival at any stage of an ICU stay. A retrospective
study was undertaken on potential collected data from two multi-disciplinary Intensive Care
Units assigned to a group of adult patients. The care workload [ midway through the Therapeutic
Intervention Systems (TISS-76)] for each ICU patient during each day was analyzed using a net-
benefit regressive approach and logistic regression as a measure of total number of nurses each
shift (workload / nurse), seriousness of the condition and medical longevity per day. The study
has found that exposure of critically ill patients to high workload / staffing ratios indicates that
the chances of survival have been significantly reduced.
Oppel, E. M., & Young, G. J. (2018). Nurse staffing patterns and patient experience of
care: An empirical analysis of US hospitals. Health services research, 53(3), 1799-1818.