Managing Staffing Setback

Managing Staffing Setback
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Managing Staffing Setback
Nurses continue to experience an extreme workload and stress, which affect their physical health, mental well-being, and satisfaction. Increased workload also affects patient’s safety and outcome due to nurse fatigue. Nurse fatigue leads to clinical errors and reduced care provision. This paper analyzes the scenario where a hospital in Alberta goes short of two nurses scheduled to work evenings over the weekend. The RNs cite sickness as their failure to report to work, leaving one active nurse for about three shifts. As such, the paper suggests the manager’s solution to this problem.
Critical Analysis
Nursing workload remains an issue in current healthcare contexts. This problem is caused by increased demands for nurses with the rising population and healthcare needs. It is also caused by a lack of sufficient nurses to meet the existing nurse shortages in the healthcare system (Weigl et al., 2016). The Canadian Nurse Association has estimated 60,000shortages of full-time equivalent nurses in 2022 if the government fails to implement policies. With these predictions, traditional strategies implemented by employers will have limited success (Kang, Kim, & Lee, 2016). The increased workload scenario caused by nurse shortage is demonstrated in the given scenario. The case indicates that the hospital will experience a nursing shortage due to the absence of two Registered Nurses. Since no casual staff is available, the remaining registered nurse will be forced to fill in absent nurses.
Evaluating Workload and Client Needs
The first step in solving this problem would be assessing the unit workload and client needs. This step evaluates the patients' health care needs at the moment to determine a care plan. It also gives insight into the kind of nursing care required on the unit. (Lee et al., 2017) noted that a nurse manager can perform a real-time assessment of nurse workload and patient needs to make an organized staffing decision. Real-time data can enable earlier identification of patients with deteriorating health, free up nurses' time and help managers plan staff and resource deployment (Weigl et al.,2016).
Patient conditions change every time, changing the nurses’ workload intensity. Therefore, assessing patient care needs on every shift by collaborating with staffs and unit manager help prevent the severity of a patients' condition. This reduces the time nurses need to deal with adverse effects. It is imperative to consider the following factors during the assessment: - patients’ healthcare needs, stability, complexity, acuity, and their level of participation in self-care (Kang, Kim, & Lee, 2016). The manager can use this information to redistribute workload among team members.
Studies show that the nursing workload determines the quality of care given to patients. For instance, the increased workload in the nursing unit may reduce quality care due to the possibility of more clinical errors, higher morbidity and mortality rates. In such hospitals, nurses experience burnout and dissatisfaction while pat...