Nurse Staffing - A Problem That Is Getting Out of Hand with No Solution in Sight

by: Karen Williams

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Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 Time: 9:49 PM - 0 comments

Nurse staffing has turned out to be a major problem in many hospitals. Research carried out has shown that hospitals with a low turnout of nurses are more likely to have a higher rate of poor patient outcome. Most of the reasons for this shortage, it is said is due to higher acuity patients needing more care and the difference between the number of nurses available to fill the vacancies that have fallen short. There also seems to be a shortage of registered nurses who are qualified and ready to fill these vacancies.

Many health care officials are of the view that the only solution to this problem would be to increase the number of nurses recruited and provide them with better facilities while at the same time optimizing the quality of care afforded to patients. While nursing staff laws are different from state to state, the shortage of nurses in comparison to the increased health care demands across the country has compounded the problem with no real solution to be seen in the near future.

Given below is a brief summary of what the different states have to say about the shortage of nurse staffing:

* A new law that has been adopted by some states requires all hospitals to form a committee to create nurse staffing plans which are supposed to look into the patient's requirements as well as an acceptable ratio of nurses to patients. This law also requires that at least 50 percent of the members of this committee be from the nursing profession.

* Another similar law enacted by some states want to address the nurse/patient ratio from the perspective of the patient's need for hospital care in relevance to his medical condition.

* The Oregon nurses union on the other hand is opposing this plan because, in their opinion, it is not possible to adapt the same staffing laws for all hospitals. According to them, a nurse in the ICU for instance will be assigned only 1 or 2 patients while her counterparts in another floor may be assigned 4 to 6 patients.

It is believed that dissatisfaction with one's job is also responsible for a lower standard in nurse staffing as well as being overloaded with work which makes a nurse unhappy with the job situation. This results in the poor quality of care given to the patients or if the situation turns unbearable the nurse is more likely to leave her employment. This creates a vicious circle where once again nurse staffing positions fall vacant and the ones remaining have to take over the burden of those who have left.

With stories of medical negligence on the rise, it's up to hospital administrations to sit up and take notice and get to the root causes. When nurse staffing is not properly monitored, too much workloads and too few nurses can put the lives of patients at a huge risk. With things going from bad to worse, it's high time health care officials got down to brass tacks and come up with viable solutions to put an end or at least minimize nurse staffing problems without delay.