Advocacy Through Legislation (Texas)

Advocacy through Legislation
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Advocacy through Legislation
Problem

The shortage of nurses is one of the biggest challenges in healthcare presently. There should be mechanisms to ensure that the available resources match the needs with an increasing demand for healthcare services. There is no resource balance in the U.S., with a notable shortage of nurses in almost every healthcare facility (Eimanzadeh & Salari, 2018). In the U.S., the number of patients outweighs the number of nurses by a lot, considering the morally acceptable ratios. Five patients per registered nurse can be appropriate in acute medical-surgical units, while two patients per nurse in intensive care units can be good. Such standards, however, do not apply in most health facilities because of nurse shortages.
The shortage of nurses causes a range of problems that should be considered. Primarily, the lack of nurses creates a hostile working environment for professionals. That is major because such individuals are forced to work for longer hours without attending to their families or other needs (Harrington et al., 2016). The few nurses ready to listen to the patients can easily quit their jobs if the workplace settings do not suit their needs. That explains the high turnover rates among nurses in the U.S. Nurses subjected to long working hours are also prone to burnout and errors. Patient safety is highly hindered when nurses are not allowed the quality rest they deserve. Healthcare facilities take little notice of the plight of the patients whose lives are put at risk every time a nurse has to work beyond the recommended time allocations.

The idea for Addressing Solution

Addressing the issue implies that more nurses are employed in healthcare facilities to boost the present workload challenges the facilities face. In the U.S., only California has set regulations on the number of nurses that healthcare facilities must employ per patient. That comes as a surprise considering the increasing demand for healthcare services. Presently, most decisions on healthcare staffing are completed by the administrators (Harrington & Edelman, 2018). Often, the decisions are made based on financial/budgetary considerations rather than clinical considerations. To that extent, according to administrators, the authority to define staffing ranges has proven futile in the entire nation.
Federal legislation will be the most appropriate avenue to address the nurse-patient ratios in healthcare facilities. The senate or congress has the mandate to legislate on matters that affect people nationwide. While states can execute independent legislations, the financial implications involved in boosting staffing for nurses imply possibilities of some states ignoring the initiatives (McCormack et al., 2017). Through the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal government can allocate resources to foot the changes for a defined period. Additionally, the federal government can enhance the training of nurses to facilitate the education of more registered nurses. Ultimately, the federal government’s involvement would imply that the legislation applies to all states at once (Harrington & Edelman...