Nursing Leadership: Mitigating the Problem of Inadequate Nurse to Patient Ratio in Aged Care Sector

Running head: NURSING LEADERSHIP
NURSING LEADERSHIP
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

NURSING LEADERSHIP1
Introducing the topic
Today’s topic of presentation is patient to nurse ratio in an aged care sector. In relation to
this, it is quite alarming that there had been a declination in the proportion of the full time
equivalent registered nurses or enrolled nurses in the residential care work force and other aged
care sector (Aiken et al.2018). Despite numerous attempts to the secure ratios in the bargaining,
no minimum staffing requirements are there to ensure a quality care for the aged care residents.
Why is it a problem?
Inadequate nurse to patient ratio might give rise to problems like:-
 Inadequate nurse staffing affects the quality of care.
 Increases the overcrowding of hospital settings
 Increases nurse workload due to the shortage of the nurses (Howe et al. 2017)
 Causes compassion fatigue and burnout among the nurses.
 Stress and burnout among the nurses might lead to increased number of clinical errors
like near misses and medication errors (Karantzas et al. 2017).
Why is this issue important?
Massive cuts in hospital budgets and nursing along with a shortage of qualified nurses
has led to unsafe nurse to patient ratio (Palmer & Eveline 2012). Hence, patients are at a higher
risk of infection, medication error, falls and even deaths.

NURSING LEADERSHIP2
What is being currently drawn about this problem?
 New models have been set up to maintain the new nurse to patient ratio. As per the
Victorian model, a minimum staffing of five nurses to every 20 patients in the elderly
care sector has been mandated (Australian Medical Association 2017).
 Safe patient care (Nurse to Patient and Midwife to Patient Ratios) Act 2015, took effect
from 23 December 2015 (Australian Medical Association 2017).
 This landmark patient safety act had been one of the landmark patient safety legislation
for Australia.
 On 19 December, the safe patient care amendment bill was introduced in to the
parliament (Australian Medical Association 2017).
 It has been assured that an additional of 600 nurse will be employed within the areas like
general medical/ surgical wards and also in the specialist areas of aged care sector,
emergency and the maternity services.
Objectives
The main objective is to decrease the turnover of the nurses and to retain the number of nurses.
Another aim is to provide psychological support to the nurses, or making a stress free
environment for relieving job stress and compassion fatigue.
How can effective leadership mitigate this problem?
 Effective leadership has been found to be an integral component of the retention and should
be an important part of any multidimensional recruitment and the retention strategy (Algoso
et al. 2017).