Negative Outcomes of Nursing Shortage in Healthcare Organizations

Running head: NURSING SHORTAGE
NURSING SHORTAGE
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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NURSING SHORTAGE
Contents
Overview:........................................................................................................................................2
Negative outcomes of nursing shortage in the organization:...........................................................2
Causes contributing to nursing shortages:.......................................................................................3
The audience to be addressed:.........................................................................................................4
References:......................................................................................................................................6

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NURSING SHORTAGE
Overview:
Nursing shortage can be defined, as the situation when the number of nurses required for
providing safe and effective care to the patient is lesser than required. Nursing shortage not only
affects the quality of care to the patients but also affects the nurses who are working in the
organizations (Rosseter, 2014). Therefore, this report would be mainly displaying the problems
of nursing shortage that is faced by the organization and will eventually propose different
recommendations so that the organization can overcome this issue successfully.
Negative outcomes of nursing shortage in the organization:
Less number of nurses on the ward results in a risky and life and threatening situation for
the patients who are admitted. The ratio of the number of nurses caring to a specific number of
patients is called the nurse patient ratio. When the nurse patient ratio is low, less number of
nurses remains available to treat comparatively larger number of patients and this lower ratio
results in poor care quality, omission of interventions, delay in medication administration as well
as afferent types of medication errors (Snavely, 2016). Studies are of the opinion that poor nurse
patient ratio are associated with higher stays of patients in the hospitals, increased readmission
rates, increased frequencies of medication errors and many others. Wu et al. (2015) are of the
opinion that low nurse patient ratio affects the therapeutic development of relationships with the
patients and thereby patient centered care could not be provided. All these affected the autonomy
and dignity of the patients and could not ensure patient satisfaction. At the same time, it also
affects the mental and emotional stability of the nurses and makes them suffer from
physiological issues as well. When less number of nurses has to tackle more number of patients
than they can, it can result in burning out of the nurses. They suffer from physical health issues
like backaches and headaches, spondilytis, indigestions and many others. It also results in