Nursing Workforce, Patient Safety, and Quality of Care: A Discussion

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This discussion post analyzes nursing workforce factors and their impact on patient outcomes.

DISCUSSION 1
Nursing workforce factors are those that are responsible for the management and
retention of a skilled nurse workforce in the practice. The two main workforce factors
that determine the quality of the services being delivered are avoidable adverse events
in nursing and hospital-acquired complications. Avoidable adverse events in nursing
practice are the unintentional injuries that cause death, injury or harm to the patient and
is also determined by long hospital stays. Such events are prevalent in nursing practice
globally. The root cause for such adverse events is denoted as the training, education
level, knowledge and skill of the nurses. Such events lead to reduced quality of nursing
care and present as a basic challenge in providing standard care in practice (Andersson
et al, 2018).
Hospital-acquired complications are another factor that can deteriorate or impact the
nursing workforce as well as the nursing care severely. According to the Health
Protection Agency survey, the hospital-acquired complication in 2011 was estimated to
be 6.4% (Twigg et al, 2016). Such complications lead to reduced quality of care ad
increased prevalence of incidence leading to long hospital stays, death and harm to the
patient. NICE guidelines served as a guideline to be followed to produce safe care to a
patient with the aim to reduce hospital-acquired complication leading to support a safe
environment for patient and ensuring that people have a positive experience of care. It
is seen that such incidences impact severely on the quality of care and competency of
the nursing workforce. Nursing staff issues, workload, inadequate training and
knowledge are held responsible for the transfer of such complications (Orique et al,
2016).
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DISCUSSION 2
The article by Aiken et al, (2017) surveyed the impact of nursing staff quantity at
individual patient care on the number of death, patient experience rating and patient
satisfaction for the services. The articles reveal how the change in the nursing skill mix
by certain professional nurses being replaced by associates leads to increase in the
ratio of preventable deaths, erodes the quality and add up to hospital nurse shortage.
This article has a great implication on nurse manager and bedside nurses that imply
that the number of staff with skilled professionals required are high per patient to ensure
better quality care and reduced incidences of errors (Aiken et al, 2017). This reveals
that the nursing associate or other staff nurses than professional registered nurses are
not well qualified or trained in order to replace the professional nurses. This implies a
gap in the curriculum as well as training for the nursing staff that could solve the issue of
shortage. The nursing manager also has a duty to sort the skilled nurses and train the
low skilled nursing staff in order to meet the criteria set for adequate nursing. The study
also indicated how the individual care, when provided to the patient with a mixture of
skilled nursing professionals, is viable in order to achieve enhanced quality and better
patient nurse outcomes (Aiken et al, 2017). Also, the incidence f burnout and excessive
workload can be minimized by efficiently training the associates and other nursing staff
in order to follow the duties as per the professional nurses.
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REFERENCES
Twigg, D. E., Myers, H., Duffield, C., Pugh, J. D., Gelder, L., & Roche, M. (2016). The
impact of adding assistants in nursing to acute care hospital ward nurse staffing on
adverse patient outcomes: An analysis of administrative health data. International
journal of nursing studies, 63, 189-200.
Orique, S. B., Patty, C. M., & Woods, E. (2016). Missed nursing care and unit-level
nurse workload in the acute and post-acute settings. Journal of nursing care
quality, 31(1), 84-89.
Andersson, Å., Frank, C., Willman, A. M., Sandman, P. O., & Hansebo, G. (2018).
Factors contributing to serious adverse events in nursing homes. Journal of clinical
nursing, 27(1-2), e354-e362.
Aiken, L. H., Sloane, D., Griffiths, P., Rafferty, A. M., Bruyneel, L., McHugh, M., ... &
Sermeus, W. (2017). Nursing skill mix in European hospitals: a cross-sectional study of
the association with mortality, patient ratings, and quality of care. BMJ Qual Saf, 26(7),
559-568. Aiken, L. H., Sloane, D., Griffiths, P., Rafferty, A. M., Bruyneel, L., McHugh,
M., ... & Sermeus, W. (2017). Nursing skill mix in European hospitals: a cross-sectional
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study of the association with mortality, patient ratings, and quality of care. BMJ Qual
Saf, 26(7), 559-568.
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