Fatigue Impact on Health Care Stakeholders

Fatigue Impact on Health Care Stakeholders Name:Institutional Affiliation:
Fatigue Impact on Health Care Stakeholders
Introduction
Health care systems are supposed to deliver the best safety measures when it comes to dispensing their services primarily because they deal with human lives. A safe medical system is structured to minimize errors. Fatigue weighs in negatively on health workers resulting in a bad performance from them that could eventually lead to fatal accidents and sometimes even death (Hirshkowitz & Sharafkhaneh, 2013). It is therefore, important to try and reduce fatigue occurrences so as to ensure top class patient care and safety of all involved stakeholders. Solving the issue of fatigue is quite challenging since there are no metrics for accurate reading of fatigue and its effect on patient care. Fatigue impact is felt profoundly by all the involved stakeholders. The only difference the degree of impact felt by all the stakeholders involved.
Fatigue Impact on Physicians and Nurses
Physicians and nurses suffering from fatigue tend to underperform in delivering their duties. Fatigue causes slow reflexes, restlessness, loss of memory and concentration, frequent headaches, sleepless disorders and muscle pains. All these factors result in reduced performance levels. Nurses end up making errors in their daily routine due to concentration problems. A nurse might end up giving wrong medications to patient causing fatal health consequences that lead to further deteriorating of patient’s health or even death (Mansfield, 2015). Physicians and nurses suffering from fatigue end up recording high rates of absenteeism since they feel weak with constant headaches. The absenteeism pattern reduces their overall output and sometimes lands them to problems with the health care administrators (Hirshkowitz & Sharafkhaneh, 2013). Fatigue sometimes drive physicians and nurses into quitting their jobs due to high levels of stress and pressure. On extreme cases fatigue propels doctors and nurses into having suicidal thoughts (Hirshkowitz & Sharafkhaneh, 2013). The high-pressure build-up, restlessness, and sleeping disorder end up driving them into committing suicide. Fatigue also increases risks of developing a cardiovascular disease and Diabetes on nurses.
Fatigue Impact on Healthcare facilities.
For health facilities like hospitals, nursing homes, and dispensaries to attract more patients, safety must be their number one priority. If health workers suffer from fatigue, the quality of service they provided will, in turn, go down leading to poor quality of service delivery. Poor quality service portrays a bad image for a health facility which in turn scare away patients and attract lawsu...