Nursing Assignment # 2 (Draft)

1
Assignment # 2 (Draft)
Introduction
The number of nursing staff to the patient population for a while has been an issue of
contention in the US public healthcare system for several decades. As per the U.S Association of
Nurses, “ensuring enough staff numbers in the award is crucial in reducing patient
complications, decreasing nurse exhaustion, reducing nurse lethargy and decreasing number of
mortality cases due to medical errors” ). Nursing staff shortage can lead to adverse consequences
for sick persons such as having a higher duration of stay due to hospital-related problems and
medication errors. It can negatively impact the nursing staff and lead to loss of job morale, nurse
burnout, and fatigue. We will assess approaches which can be used to solve inadequate nurse
ratios from a perspective of nurse a leader as well as a nurse manager and administration
interventions available to help solve this problem. Analyze causal factors for nursing shortage
and its implications in the United States.
Nurse staffing issue not only poses a risk to patient safety but also to the safety of the
nurse. Hospitals, as well as insurance companies, are pushing to move toward shortened hospital
stays. They are also moving towards offering services for higher acuity patients to remain
competitive (Sink et al., 2010). These changes further challenge nurses in their skills and time
management, as they are pushed to achieve more tasks and carry a higher patient load. Increased
demands on nurses cause increased exhaustion, leading nurses to make potentially life-
threatening mistakes to their patients. When nurses are challenged to carry a higher patient load,
they are forced to spend less time with each patient. This could cause a nurse to miss a
developing sign in a patient signaling a worsening condition or pass a medication at the incorrect

2
time. By the end of their shift, nurses still must finish their documentation, leading to excessive
overtime.
A resolution to this issue involves health care administrators recognizing the appropriate
ratio of nurses to patients (Iglesias et al., 2013). Once a ratio has been decided upon, the
administration must maintain that ratio by hiring the appropriate amount of nurses and support
staff to care for their patient load. If the administration cannot uphold an appropriate ratio,
lawmakers must put in place laws and regulate the nurse to patient ratio. Not only are an
adequate number of registered nurses needed in a unit, but also hospitals must ensure that the
needed skill levels are available to care for patients. An intensive care unit may be staffed with
the needed number of nurses, but if they are all new graduate nurses, patient care is still at risk,
as experienced nurses with advanced skills are needed.
Possible solutions
Nurse Leader Approach
Individual nurses themselves are leaders and guide their fellows. Some of the roles of a
nurse are to ensure the safety and upheld rights of a patient. Nurses can also come in to help his
or her fellow nurses in terms of helping duties or articulating their needs on behalf of them.
Nurses are advocates and leaders by nature. Therefore nurses team up to ensure all is well within
hospital units. A nurse leader may initiate teamwork amongst his juniors in decision making to
outline the challenges they are facing in regards to the nurse-patient ratio (Johansen et al., 2019)
Most of the nurses across almost all states have recognized this issue and tried to
articulate so it could be solved. An example is nurses from California for thirteen years now,
they have been vocal in the fight for an adequate nurse-patient ratio Nurses across the country
have seen unsafe staff nurses to patient ratios and have raised their voices. There is now a bill in