NUR4455 - Action Plan: Nurse Staffing and Care Outcome Improvement

This document outlines an action plan to address understaffing in healthcare facilities, which negatively impacts nurses, patients, and management. The plan includes hiring additional full-time and part-time staff to improve the nurse-patient ratio, reduce burnout, and enhance the quality of care. Strategies for retaining nurses, such as creating a conducive work environment, offering competitive remuneration, and avoiding overwork, are also emphasized. The goal is to improve patient outcomes, increase nurse satisfaction, and enhance the facility's reputation by implementing these strategies within a defined timeline.

Running head: ACTION PLAN 1
Action Plan
Name
Institution

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Action Plan
All the healthcare facilities should be keen on their staffing levels because it plays a
significant role in determining their success. If a facility is understaffed, it cannot be possible for
it to accomplish its short and long-term goals. Meaning, the few personnel cannot deliver
because they are demoralized, stressed, feel exploited, undervalued, hence, they cannot
effectively discharge their duties. This in turn, ends up interfering with the quality of services
offered in such facilities. To ultimately, address these challenges, this paper recommends an
action plan which must be adopted.
The first strategy to apply to address this challenge is to hire additional full-time
personnel and give them an opportunity to serve the facility. When the employees are few, they
cannot sustain the demands from the patients. This can be disastrous because it might render
them inefficient and ineffective. The end result is that they cannot effectively discharge their
duties (Rahman, H. A., &Shamsudin, A. S. (2015). However, all these can be addressed if the
management hires additional staff and uses them to supplement the services of the existing ones.
Although it might be a costly intervention, adequate staffing can be the best way through which
the management can get a long-term solution to this problem. The hiring of new staff is an
initiative that should be undertaken only within three months. The management should
progressively do it by coming up with a priority plan and starting from the most deserving
sections. The hiring of additional full-time staff will help in strengthening the nurse-patient ratio
and minimizing the cases of burn out because the available staff will translate into few, but
productive working hours.
Besides, the management must hire part-time employees to serve in the facility. If it is
not possible to hire full-time staff, the management can employ part-time personnel because they

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can be equally valuable. Part-time staff can also be equally valuable because they can be relied
upon to fill the missing gap. Hence, whenever there is any section which does not have enough
personnel, additional part-time nurses should be allocated there because they can be relied upon
to supplement the services of their full-time counterparts. This action plan only requires six
months to be tried and implemented. It is advantageous because it is cost-effective (Twigg &
McCullough, 2014). It is cheaper to hire part-time staff because, unlike their full-time
counterparts, they are not entitled to extra benefits like insurance, pension, and such like
incentives. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the management to come up with a well-
organized plan on how to implement this plan and ensure that it is successful.
Last, but not least, the management must retain a pool of nurses at all times. The
retention of staff is essential because it will ensure that there is continuity and consistency in the
level of services offered at the facility. One of the strategies that should be applied when
retaining employees is by creating a conducive working environment to them. Besides, the
employees should be motivated by giving them good and reasonably attractive remuneration
packages, and enabling them to work for short periods at all times (Frith, Anderson, Tseng &
Fong, 2012). At no any given time should the nurses be overworked because they can feel
demoralized. The management should strengthen the leadership system and ensure that the duty
roster of all the staff is maintained and updated at any time. No employee should be forced to
work on overtime because such an arrangement should be voluntary and subjected to additional
benefits (Wong, Cummings &Ducharme, 2013).
In conclusion, the poor staffing of the healthcare facilities is a disastrous thing that should
not be condoned at all. The high nurse-patient ratio is not god because it affects the nurses,
management, and the patients as well. It affects the nurses by resulting into burn outs and lack of

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motivation in the work. The patients suffer because it deprives them of an opportunity to benefit
from high quality services. On the other hand, the problem affects the management because it
might result into poor performance, lack of customer satisfaction, and damaged reputation. Thus,
the only solution is the implementation of this action plan.

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References
Frith, K. H., Anderson, E. F., Tseng, F., & Fong, E. A. (2012). Nurse staffing is an
important strategy to prevent medication errors in community hospitals. Nursing
Economics, 30(5), 288.
Kortbeek, N., Braaksma, A., Burger, C. A., Bakker, P. J., & Boucherie, R. J. (2015).
Flexible nurse staffing based on hourly bed census predictions. International
journal of production economics, 161, 167-180.
Rahman, H. A., &Shamsudin, A. S. (2015). The impact of patient to nurse ratio on
quality of care and patient safety in the medical and surgical wards in Malaysian
private hospitals: a cross-sectional study. Asian Social Science, 11(9), 326.
Twigg, D., & McCullough, K. (2014). Nurse retention: a review of strategies to create
and enhance positive practice environments in clinical settings. International
journal of nursing studies, 51(1), 85-92.
Wong, C. A., Cummings, G. G., &Ducharme, L. (2013). The relationship between
nursing leadership and patient outcomes: a systematic review update. Journal of
nursing management, 21(5), 709-724.