Examining the Impact of Staffing Levels on Quality of Care and Work Atmosphere in Healthcare Settings

The evolution in healthcare has led to various aspects, including the need for quality care, enhanced patient outcomes, and introduction of evidence-based research. An essential issue on how to address such improvements entails examining staffing levels, defined as the number of employees capable of addressing the organizational tasks linked to work as well as the demand for nursing services (Sri Lestari et al., 2020). In parallel, healthcare staffing means the number of healthcare experts available in every nursing shift, such as professionals, nurses, as well as support staff compared to the patients they are conversant with. This means that healthcare staffing is paramount to enhance quality care and maintain the worker atmosphere (Hain et al., 2020). In this case, current realized projects are crucial to improve the outcomes and the ultimate contentment. Even though the healthcare organizations have the potential to give solutions, the workforce’s available and the need for care and attention is currently lower, making staffing a significant problem. In real sense, it has been realized that there is a disconnect between the available workforce and the valuable services and care needed, leading to understaffing in various healthcare settings. Many advanced countries have undertaken initiatives to improve this kind of issue by increasing staffing to help avoid issues across the study locations (Nakanwagi et al., 2022). In parallel, it is important to highlight that the nursing profession faces acute shortage despite the need to augment nurse job prospects (Spooner et al., 2021). This essay explains the impact of staffing levels via the literature review and explains how the sampling can help to address the staffing levels problem.

Literature Reviews

Understanding the impact of staffing levels is important for understanding nursing care. For example, earlier research by Griffiths et al. (2018) was seen as vital in highlighting the importance of staffing in achieving the care outcomes. It is important to highlight that the authors demonstrated that a reduction in skills mix was dependent on the hazards of death. In their study, the authors found a positive correlation, which helped achieve the 4% lower levels of cardiac arrest and two months’ mean duration of stay at the intensive care unit. These aspects were dependent on the care environment, with the highest expectations when the intensive care was staffed with qualified cardiac nurses. In the relevant study by Bridges et al. (2019), it was noted that few nurses were linked to poor care quality, attitudes, and the nurse-patient objectives. In other words, poor nurse-to-patient relations are fed by few nurses and can impact different dimensions, such as the management of resources, education and teaching (Ornelas et al., 2020). Even without strong linkages between nursing staffing and patient care, it is established there is a positive correlation between some conditions based on the staffing and other conditions. Hain et al. (2020) noted that conditions such as hard work and turnover have direct links to insufficient staffing as proven in other studies available. In this regard, it can be important to underscore that with fixed scheduled levels, healthcare organizations and administrators can offer work schedules that are flexible, which can increase productivity and reduce the chances of nurse injury (Currie & Patel, 2023). It is important to highlight that insufficient staffing adversely affects the care outcomes of the patients and can also lower their contentment with the services. The past results demonstrate that poor staffing is often associated with increased rates of readmission and negative occurrences of healthcare (Harris, 2022). Further, studies by Ball et al. (2020) indicated that instances of high nurse delivery in the healthcare could ensure that the nurses are in a potent position to notice the patient responses to the treatment and offer interventions without creating adverse impacts. In this view, the augmentation of the mortality rates linked to insufficient staffing and delivery can be prospective for making the staffing pivotal across the applied context.

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It is also noted that the new recruits participate differently in healthcare, and new nurses are not associated with the existing staffing, as noted by Spooner et al. (2021). Studies conducted by Harris (2022) have demonstrated that experienced nurses can adapt easily to any form of setting because they have a wild card already developed in the past nursing environments. In the same vein, research indicates that new graduates have the potential to change their works everyday, thus making it increasingly difficult to select a specific work setting and talent (Sri L