Legal Professional Issues in Nursing: Impact of Nurse Workload on Patient Safety and Strategies for Workload Management

Legal Professional Issues in Nursing 1
Legal professional issues in nursing
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Legal Professional Issues in Nursing 2
Nursing Workload
Nurse workload has been associated with the volume of the nurses' work. Attempts have
been also made to quantify the work of nurses relatively to health human resource management.
Studies indicate that there is a shortage of nurse globally and as a result, the healthcare provision
is widely affected. Nurse workload typically arise when the ration of work or service demanded
is more than the number of staff offering thus making the nurses to increasingly play versatile
roles to meet the increasing demands (Alghamdi, 2016) The nurses workload also can be caused
by inadequate supply of nurses, reduced staffing overtime and the reduction in the length of stay
of the patient. Poor technology with healthcare facilities also forms key factor in nurse
workload.
It is an indication that nurses in the majority of the healthcare facilities perform lots of
work beyond the established standards. Due to increasing number of population, the ration of
nurses to that of patients is worrying. However, the hard economic conditions have made many
health facilities to reduce the number of nurses being employed and increase the overtime
(Carrara, et al., 2016). Increasing cost pressure made majorities of hospitals to reduce the length
of stay of patients in hospitals. This means that it is only the sicker patients that are cared,
therefore their work is much intensive and need lots of time.
Significance of Nursing Workload to Nursing Profession
The nursing workload is a big issue in nursing profession because it curtails set standards
of nursing practice in Australia. It does not give chance to the nurses to perform their duty well
and eventually falling into legal constraints (Pearson et al., 2006). The nurse workload has
ruined reputation of many healthcare facilities due to its outcome. Many types of research have

Legal Professional Issues in Nursing 3
indicated that heavy workload among nurse leads to job dissatisfaction of more than 20% of the
nurses in the country. The move would lead to low morale, turnover, poor performance,
absenteeism and eventually risking the quality of patient care and effectiveness of the
organization.
High nurse workload is one of the key job stress creator in the majority of healthcare
facilities. It can result in emotional exhaustion, anger and cynicism, and burnout (Hayes et al.,
2015). Nurses who are experiencing these issues may not in full capacity to perform efficiently
and effectively due to the fact that their cognitive and physical resources could have reduced thus
affecting the safety of the patient. Nursing workload do not only affects individual nurses. It can
also have effects on other nurses and other medics. It reduces the time which nurses have to
assist other nurses. Due to inadequate time to help each other, it may result in inadequate training
or supervision of new nurses under training.
Furthermore, the nurse workload has brought in delays in patients admissions. Lots of work
make them slow in taking details of the patients and may delay those who are in the waiting bay
(Blay et al., 2017). Long queues make the hospital inefficient and some patients with serious
conditions have in the past died under such circumstances. Studies have further indicated that
nurses are facing threat of violence within their work station due to lots of workload. Majority of
the questioned nurses indicated that they have turned violent more than once in a period of one
month. It is a fact that nurses are psychologically disturbed hence they are at risk of turning
violent. Generally, the nurse workload in NSW has slowed provision of healthcare. Due to lots of
works on nurses, health care facilities faces lots of long queue of patients. 34% of the patients in
NSW indicated that they were not satisfied with health care provisions within the state