Nursing Leadership Assesment Reports

Nursing Leadership 1
Nursing Leadership
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Nursing Leadership 2
Criteria 1
Understaff nurses
Criteria 2
Understaffing of nurses is a major issue that affects both the nurses and patients. Studies have
found out that there exists an association between understaffing of nurses, quality healthcare of
patients (Mosadeghrad 2014) and nurse safety and job satisfaction (Gulavani & Shinde 2014).
Understaffing of nurses is a critical issue because it affects patient safety and increases
healthcare cost (Martin 2015).
Understaff nurses increase workload and as a result, nurses do not have sufficient time to
undertake tasks that directly affect patient safety. A heavy workload reduces collaboration and
communication with nurses, thus affecting their safety. Additionally, understaff nurses have a
heavy workload with results to job dissatisfaction, low morale and poor performance at work.
This is likely to threaten patient care and safety. Understaff nurses are also likely to make slips
and lapses errors (Lartey, Cummings, & Profetto‐McGrath 2014).
The problem of understaffing nurses can be resolved through effective leadership. This is
because it is the leadership that makes decisions and therefore they can decide to address
understaff nurses by increasing the number of employees or engaging additional nurses during
peak. Effective leadership can also address understaff nurses by transforming the work
environment to be friendly and help reduce the stress levels of overking nurses (Dawson et al.
2014, Roberts-Turner et al. 2014).