Essay Example on Global Healthcare Stressors: Strategies for Administration and Nursing Shortage

Introduction

Healthcare organizations across the world adopt distinct strategies to guide the decisions of the administration in achieving particular objectives. Organizations often necessitate enhancing resolution plans when facing healthcare stressors that may impact their growth. However, a shortage of nurses continues to be a global stressor influencing healthcare, hence triggering the development of policies to gratify the competing requirement of delivering quality cost-effective care and a workforce that offers the services. Thus, healthcare organizations should implement and address the policies and practices of the nursing shortage to keep healthcare in business.

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Competing Needs in Nursing Shortage

Healthcare establishments aim at offering the target population with safe, efficient, and quality care; however, the nursing shortages are impacting this objective achievement. According to the American Nurses Association (2015), nurses’ ethics code with interpretative reports stipulates that healthcare providers have the ethical accountability of executing and upholding practices that facilitate quality and safe healthcare. The augmenting nursing shortage impacts the economic development of healthcare amenities and the delivery of quality care to patients. An inconsistent patient-to-nurse ratio is influencing patients’ outcomes and safety. In this case, the nursing shortage may be the facilitating aspect that drives the healthcare organization to allocate an increasing number of patients to caregivers to deliver care or due to facilities aim for profit maximization, particularly for-profit-healthcare organizations. Thus, the competing need to provide quality and safe care forces the healthcare organizations initiatives to enhance a policy that will be executed to overcome the problems while saving cost.

Moreover, the healthcare workforce is another aspect influencing the nursing shortage, necessitating the healthcare organizations to implement policy while considering the limited resources to gratify the needs. Healthcare organizations are moving from a treat-to-heal care concept to a business profit maximization model over the outcomes of the patients (Kelly & Porr, 2018). However, according to the American Nurses Association (2015), the ethical, legal, and moral practice consequences compel caregivers to deliver quality care to the paramount of their capability among the nursing shortage and its existing implications. Hence, there is a necessity for establishing a strategy that balances the competing workforce needs and the organizational requirement for making profits to ensure patients acquire benefit from the quality care, thus achieving equilibrium of the essentials.

Policy in my Organization

In my practice setting, all healthcare professionals focus on DMEP (Disclosure of Medical Error), where they are obligated to report any clinical error. DMEP is a strategy that requires all caregivers to report all mistakes intended at nurturing comprehensive ethical practices by making care providers responsible for their performances for reducing or eradicating clinical errors. The nursing shortage impacts the DMEP effectiveness in conditions when the nurse’s workload increases as a result of inadequate staff; thus, the menace of medical errors becomes inevitable, which frequently goes underreported or unreported.

Ethical Consideration

Implementing a policy such as DMEP projected at improving behaviors to ensure safe patient care and results as well as minimizing healthcare costs by making nurses liable for their performances is an ethical practice. Besides, it fails to include a strategy to support a rational Nurse-to-patient ratio to help nurses in minimizing clinical errors. Due to the nursing shortages, nurses tend to have an increased workload instigated by an influx of patients to the healthcare positioning the nurse at risk for medical errors. Some of these faults which occur are unpreventable errors. According to Waters et al. (2015), Medicare has stopped paying for such occurrences and making the organizations face the financial burden.

Additionally, when errors occur due to the existence of workload, it results in the decline of the system’s purpose, placing the patients at risk of poor quality care, posing an issue in the enhancement of ethics. DMEP execution in a state with a shortage of nurses and a high number of patients compromises ethical values in health care. According to the American nurses association (2015), nurses have the right to exit in such a working environment as this practice worsens the context with the nursing shortage.

Recommendation

A nursing policy that can effectively minimize the rates of nursing short and the necessity to enhance quality and patient care is the quadruple aim planned by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. The quadruple aim comprises of four essential areas for enhancing healthcare, such as attaining more significant patient outcomes, improved population health, reduced healthcare expenses, and better staff well-being (Jacobs et al., 2018). DMEP inspires safety measures to attain outstanding patient care outcomes, which finally amounts to enhanced population health and minimizes healthcare costs; however, it failed to mention standards for achieving improved workforce well-being. Strategies to enhancing staff well-being, such as employing more nurses to enable sufficient nurse-to-patient ratio and consistent working hours, will minimize nursing shortages and allow the nurse to perform in the most ethical and acceptable method. For instance, in situations of a nurse shortage, caregivers working multiple shifts will increase their payments due to the overtime wages. An organization seeking to obtain new staff by offering educational reimbursement to advance their degree will attract and maintain qualified staff nurses. Thus adopting a strategy that supports both adequate nurse staffing and hiring more healthcare providers will assist in minimizing nurse workload and enhance a suitable work environment resulting in safe patient outcomes and job satisfaction.

Evidence that informs the healthcare issue

The article Staff nurses and their solutions to the nursing shortage by Daniel & Smith recommend that organizations must be creative by promoting empowerment to revitalize and maintain the nursing workforce. Empowerment helps in employment ratio decisions making deliberations on perception levels and high volume leading to less nursing shortage. Some organizations have utilized this technique to offer high quality, safety, and patient gratification levels and more significant nursing processes. Therefore, it is rational for organizations to analyze the present strategy and fix any existing deficiency to meet the needs of stakeholders.

The study Present and future needs for nurses by Buchan & Aiken address the significance of health executive in focusing on supply issues such as improving retention and recruitment with the comparatively scarce nurses. It states that nurses are mostly attracted to work because of the numerous opportunities to enhance professionally, to achieve autonomy, and to contribute in decision making while being impartially rewarded. Factors related to the work environment can be crucial as decentralized management style, elastic opportunities of employment, and access to constant professional advancement can enhance both the nursing staff retention and patient care.

Conclusion

Attaining anticipated and quality care in the nursing sector entails the practice of best organizational practices and policies. Nursing shortage continues to impact the healthcare organizations adversely. Substantial requirements like the competing need of delivering quality and safe care and workforce, require the adoption of a policy to gratify all the involved stakeholders. Balancing all the needs of parties through fair practice is vital in maintaining a suitable working environment. Strategies such as employee incentives, proper nurse-to-patient ratio, or rewards to reinforce existing DMEP should be capable of retaining all parties satisfied.

References

American nurses association (2015). Code of ethics for nurses with interpretive statements. https://www.nursingworld.org/coe-view-only

Buchan. J & Aiken. L. (2010). Solving nursing shortages: a common priority. Doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2702.2008.02636.x

Daniel.M.K & Smith.Y.C. (2018). Present and future needs for nurses https://doi.org/10.1111/jabr.12122

Jacobs, B., McGovern, J., Heinmiller, J., Drenkard, K. (2018). Engaging Employees in Well-Being: Moving From the Triple Aim to the Quadruple Aim. doi: 10.1097/NAQ.0000000000000303

Kelly, P., & Porr, C. (2018). Ethical nursing care versus cost containment: Considerations to enhance RN practice. DOI: 10.3912/OJIN.Vol23No01Man06

Waters, T. M., Daniels, M. J., Bazzoli, G. J., Perencevich, E., & Dunton, N. (2015). Effect of Medicare’s Nonpayment for Hospital-Acquired Conditions Lessons for Future Policy. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.5486