Nursing Issues: Nurse-Patient Ratio and Confidentiality Breach

Running head: NURSING ISSUES
NURSING ISSUES
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NURSING ISSUES
Introduction:
Nursing shortage can be defined as the situation where there arises a demand for the
nursing professionals to meet up the needs and requirement of service users because the number
of nurses present in the organization proves to be not sufficient to meet the service care needs
(Jacob et al., 2015). This has become one of the most severe issues that healthcare industry is
facing resulting in propounding impact on the quality service delivery to the patients by the
professionals. Confidentiality breach is another concern that is also affecting the patient
satisfaction and involving the professionals in legal consequences on breaking human rights.
This assignment will mainly be focusing in these two issues faced by the healthcare
organizations putting more light on the different aspects of them. Australia’s Future Health
Workforce – Nurses is the policy published by Commonwealth Australia discussing the nursing
shortage issue. Patient Confidentiality Policy is another policy published by Department of
health Australia discussing confidentiality issues of patients.
Discussion:
First issue: Nurse patient ratio:
The nurse patient ratio is one of the most important aspects that help in identifying the
presence of nursing shortage in the healthcare organization. The nurse-patient ratio can be
defined as the ratio of the nurses on a particular floor, ward as well as unit to the number of
patients who require the healthcare services. When the nursing professionals are lower than that
of the number of patients requiring service or when the nurse patient ratio is low, it can result in
negative consequences on the health of the patient and can lead to unsafe and poor quality
service (Whitehead & Myers, 2016). There has been a huge increase in the demand of healthcare

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NURSING ISSUES
services particularly among the aging population in the present decade. This has been mainly due
to the advancement of the medical science as well as the technological improvements that had
helped in increasing the life expectancy of the people. However, the condition of life in the aged
population has not developed as many complex disorders affect them. Therefore, in order to meet
the increased healthcare needs of the huge number of the patients of the aged population, the
present number of nursing professionals is not sufficient. Hence, this increased number of the
aging population had created the main urge of requirement of more nurses in the nation.
Effects of poor nurse-patient ratio: poor patient care and increased suffering:
Researchers are of the opinion that low nurse patient ration remain intricately associated
with increased mortality rates in the healthcare units. Moreover, it also results in huge number of
medication errors by the nursing professionals, as they have to handle huge patients within short
time creating huge scopes of human errors (Buchan et al., 2015). Wrong infusion rates,
admission of more number of doses than the prescribed number of doses, omission of the
medications, mistaken medication as well as administering medication of one patient to another
patient are some of the types of medication errors that remain associated with low nurse-patient
ratios. About 12.76% of the different medication errors that are reported to the higher authorities
are mainly because of the poor nurse-patient ratios in the hospital organizations (Whitehead &
Myers, 2016). Studies are also of the opinion that inadequate nurse-patient ratios are associated
with higher levels of the patient falls and different type of infections that results in higher levels
of suffering for the patients (Wang et al., 2017).

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NURSING ISSUES
Effects of poor nurse-patient ratio: burnouts and workplace stress
Attending to huge number of patients more than the capability of the professionals can
result in physical and emotional drain-outs of energy that affect the health of the professionals.
The nursing professionals are seen to suffer from burnouts and fatigue that not only affect their
personal as well as professional lives but also have severe impacts on the health of the patient.
Due to nursing shortage, many of the professionals are forced to work for more number of hours
than their stipulated hours (Maclean et al., 2014). These make them suffer from physical issues
like body-ache, shoulder-ache, headaches, fatigue, gastric disorders and many others. Moreover,
nursing job is emotionally draining as well and caring or so many patients with different needs
and requirements also create mental and emotional stress in them making them feel stressed and
burned-out. These forms of stress and fatigue affect the ways by which they provide care to the
patients. They do not get proper time and energy for developing therapeutic relationship with the
patients that are extremely important for the development of trust and bond among the patient
and the nurses (Buchan et al., 2015).
Absence of effective communication between the nurses and patients due to reduced
patient-time for the nurse’s impact patient satisfaction. The patient are seen to believe that the
nurses are not providing them enough respect and care which they require and this makes the
patients upset (Cowan et al., 2015). Patients also report longer waiting times and this is also
associated with low nurse-patient ratio. Such stress of attending more number of patients often
forces them to work beyond their stipulated hours and this affects their work life balance were
they cannot have proper personal and family lives. These affect them to a huge extent and all
these affected the morale of the nurses making them leave their jobs.