Nurse Staffing & Care Outcomes: Implementation Strategies & Challenges

This report addresses the critical issue of nurse staffing and its impact on patient care outcomes. It identifies three key steps for implementing effective nurse staffing plans: creating comprehensive staffing plans that address nurse shortages and patient needs, improving the quality of nursing education to enhance patient safety, and increasing the number of registered nurses in healthcare facilities to improve nurse-to-patient ratios. The report also acknowledges challenges such as the difficulty of creating adaptable staffing plans, the high cost of quality nursing education, the lack of full-time job opportunities, and the shortage of nurses leading to extended work hours. For each challenge, the report proposes solutions, including unit-specific staffing plans, government-sponsored nursing education programs, and the creation of more full-time nursing positions to improve workforce flexibility and patient care quality.

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
1
Nursing Assignment
Name
Institution

NURSING ASSIGNMENT 2
Nurse Staffing and Outcome of Care
Nurse staffing is significant to patient care and safety as it determines the amount of time
and care that will be given to a patient for their overall health care. Some of the steps I would
take to implement nurse staffing are
Three Steps to Implement Capstone Project
1. Creating staffing plans:
The managers in hospitals need to work with their nurses to develop effective staffing
plans. The staffing plans should have strategies that address the nurse shortages in the various
units in the hospital as well as address the needs of the patients in the organization as they
change (Aiken et al., 2014). These plans will give both the nurses and the hospital management
the direction to take when there are staff shortages and the challenges that arise (Aiken et al.,
2014).
2. Improving the quality of education:
Nurses that are highly educated are more likely to give quality care that ensures the
safety of the patient as compared to one that is not ((He, Staggs, Bergquist-Beringer & Dunton,
2016).). Therefore nurses that have a quality education can work productively and conquer the
challenges of staffing in a hospital.
3. Increasing the number of registered nurses in a healthcare facility
Research that was conducted found out that there was a decrease in the death rates of
patients in facilities that had a higher number of nurses (Cho et al., 2015). This is because the
nurse-to-patient ratios are increased thus the patient care is also improved.

NURSING ASSIGNMENT 3
4. Maintain the workforce flexibility
A lot of hospitals have a shortage of nurses, and therefore they tend to work more
extended hours which causes them not to work effectively. The hospitals need to create shifts
and shorter hours that allow the nurses to be effective.
Challenges and Solutions to Implementation
Challenge #1: Creating staffing plans can be tiresome especially regularly since the
needs of the patient are changing as the patients are changing. Therefore it can be challenging to
come up with strategies that can cater to each patient in the hospital.
Solution #1: To overcome this challenge, the hospital managers and nurses can create
staffing plans that are specific to each unit in the hospital. This way it will be easier to address
the issues in each unit as one unit has the same characteristics (Griffiths et al., 2016).
Challenge #2: High-quality education can be expensive especially out of pocket.
Therefore most nurses will get an education in schools that they can easily afford.
Solution #2: To overcome this challenge the government needs to make nursing
education more affordable especially the high-quality education or they can create more
sponsorship programmes for the students.
Challenge #3: There is lack of full-time jobs in the healthcare facilities which is what
many nurses are looking for. This is a challenge as many healthcare facilities only provide part-
time jobs and therefore cannot increase the number of registered nurses. This prompts many
nurses to look for jobs out of the country.

NURSING ASSIGNMENT 4
Solution #3: To overcome these healthcare facilities need to provide full-time jobs to
nurses
Challenge #4: There is a shortage of nurses in hospitals; therefore, they work more
extended hours.
Solution #4: To overcome this, the hospital needs to higher more nurses by providing
full-time jobs as mentioned earlier.

NURSING ASSIGNMENT 5
References
Aiken, L. H., Sloane, D. M., Bruyneel, L., Van den Heede, K., Griffiths, P., Busse, R., ... &
McHugh, M. D. (2014). Nurse staffing and education and hospital mortality in nine
European countries: a retrospective observational study. The Lancet, 383(9931), 1824-
1830.
Cho, E., Sloane, D. M., Kim, E. Y., Kim, S., Choi, M., Yoo, I. Y., ... & Aiken, L. H. (2015).
Effects of nurse staffing, work environments, and education on patient mortality: an
observational study. International journal of nursing studies, 52(2), 535-542.
Griffiths, P., Ball, J., Drennan, J., Dall'Ora, C., Jones, J., Maruotti, A., ... & Simon, M. (2016).
Nurse staffing and patient outcomes: strengths and limitations of the evidence to inform
policy and practice. A review and discussion paper based on evidence reviewed by the
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence Safe Staffing guideline development.
International journal of nursing studies, 63, 213-225.
He, J., Staggs, V. S., Bergquist-Beringer, S., & Dunton, N. (2016). Nurse staffing and patient
outcomes: a longitudinal study on trend and seasonality. BMC Nursing, 15(1), 60.