Essay Sample on Overtime in Healthcare: Adverse Outcomes for Nurses & Patients

Introduction

Overtime working in the healthcare industry has caused adverse outcomes to both patients and nurses. Nurses who work for long hours are sometimes forced to work extra hours due to a shortage of nurses in a health facility. In the rehabilitation center where I work, the facility manages to stroke and traumatic brain injury, among other disorders. Nurses in the facility experience adverse outcomes such as burnouts, job dissatisfaction, and medication errors due to overtime responsibilities (Wealthy, 2017). Like the rehabilitation Centre with fewer nurses, other healthcare units in the US experience the same problem. As a rehabilitative nurse, these safety challenges concern me because they directly affect the rehabilitation Centre that I work. My vision with the safety problem is to engage health officers to employ many nurses in hospitals to reduce such risks.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Recently, a nurse fainted while rehabilitating a patient who was recovering from a stroke. It was also realized that she had overdosed the patient who was then found asleep. The nurse had spent more than sixteen hours with the patient. Besides, the nurse had to work an extra hour because the nurse who was to be on the shift fell ill. The facility should hire more nurses to help in saving such situations. Work exhaustion is currently threating to both patients and nurses. I was involved in the case because, at the same time, I was in the facility attending to a patient with brain damage. Moreover, I was the one who found them while walking around with my patient.

According to Sammer et al. (2010), health facilities must have appropriate leadership that acknowledges a hazardous environment (Sammer et al., 2010). Following the above situation, it is evident that the HR of the facility does not admit that there are fewer nurses. Besides, the culture of safety must begin with leaders assessing the situation. Also, there is a need to develop teamwork. It is because cooperation that made the nurse accept working for an extra shift to represent the ill patient. The nurse agreed to give extra patient care to achieve a reliable result. Sammer et al. (2010) articulate that communication is vital in a healthcare organization (Sammer et al., 2010). In the rehabilitation Centre, there was appropriate communication between the two nurses, which was very significant. Furthermore, the above scenario should help the hospital's management in learning that they have to employ more to avoid such safety problems in the future.

Further, the hospital must develop a culture that does not blame a single person for errors that occur. Instead, the whole facility needs to recognize the mistakes that have occurred and take full responsibility. The hospital or the healthcare facility should operate as a community. A nursing society does not need to blame nurses for mistakes that have happened because of overworking. They should employ many nurses to solve the problem. Also, according to Sammer et al. (2010), the patient's family must come first before anyone (Sammer et al., 2010). Therefore, a patient must not care for himself or herself but also involve his or her family members in the treatment plan.

Review

According to Stimpel, Sloane & Aiken, shift length determines the nurse's outcomes at work, which is related to the scenario above. Their research reveals that burnout can be due to mental or emotional exhaustion that can let anything dangerous happen to a nurse (Stimpfel, Sloane, & Aiken, 2012). The three authors articulate that rest is the only solution to work burnout. In another article by Wealthy Cathleen, she asserts that fatigue in the workplace can make nurses to overdose or underdoes patients because burnouts mostly affect the brain (Wealthy, 2017). The brain coordinates all body functions, and when it is exposed to stress, it will fail to function appropriately. Garrett (2008) also believes that nurse staffing patterns are what lead to medical errors and nurse burnout (Garret, 2008). Exhausted nurses are often not physically and emotionally stable; therefore, they will undoubtedly perform medical errors and can also lead to mental instability. However, in both articles, such situations have been placed for regulations restricting overtime work.

Plan

To improve such situations, both the government and health organizations should formulate rules, which will restrict nurses from working extra hours. Besides, according to the policies of nursing in the US, nurses should not work for more than eight hours in a week. Shifting working lengths for nurses is of significance in the plan to change the safety problem experienced by many hospitals. More nursing schools should be as well be started to make students enroll for different courses. Starting many nursing schools will ensure students graduate with varying specializations in nursing. It will provide the government and private hospitals to have enough workforce. Also, hospital management needs to understand their environments and identify new methods of stopping the safety problem. Human resource managers are charged with the responsibility of hiring employees; therefore, in cases where there are fewer nurses in a hospital, they should hire more nurses to enhance teamwork.

References

Garret, C. (2008). The Effect of Nurse Staffing Patterns on Medical Errors and Nurse Burnout. AORN Journal, vol.87 (6)

Sammer et al. (2010). What is Patient Safety Culture? A Review of the Literature. Nursing Scholarship Journal, vol.42 (2)

Stimpfel, A. W., Sloane, D. M., & Aiken, L. H. (2012). The Longer the Shifts for Hospital Nurses, The Higher the Levels of Burnout and Patient Dissatisfaction. Health Affairs, 31(11), 2501-2509.

Wealthy, C. (2017). Nursing Overtime: Should It Be Regulated. Retrieved from https://www.nursingeconomics.net/necfiles/2017/JA17/213.pdf