Impact Report for Senior Relationship
As a profession with a national shortage crisis looming, it’s understandable that it is proving difficult to fill vacant nursing positions in nursing, particularly registered nurses. While this is an ongoing challenge to members of management and other entities, the ones who may suffer the most are the patients. Providing adequate, and most importantly, safe care to patients in the healthcare setting requires many factors to be met. One of the largest issues in healthcare settings across the board involve having proper nurse-patient ratios at the inpatient level whether that be long term or acute care settings. This issue has resulted in many guidelines and policies being set forth to ensure both the patient and the nursing staff are safe, though there are many shortcomings to providing adequate staffing.
With studies being conducted to determine the cause and effect on nursing staff shortages and patient outcomes, the results are surprising. With a shortage of nursing staff, important care is left uncomplete (Munn, 2017). Across different healthcare settings, it was determined that higher patient loads resulted in increased readmission rates, as well as infection rates on the rise. Providing a steady nurse patient ratio allowed decreased instances of nursing burnout and work- related injuries. This issue prevalent in the nursing community will be explored by examining the culture and environment involving a post-acute rehabilitation and long-term care facility in small town Tennessee. The facility has been experiencing a high turn over rate of nurses and consistently deals with the fallbacks of an uneven nurse to patient ratio.
Struggling with online classes or exams? Get expert help to ace your coursework, assignments, and tests stress-free!