The Nursing Issue With The Nurse To Patient Ratio

Nurse to Patient Ratio Name Institution Nurse to Patient Ratio Nursing is one of the professionals that plays an essential role in the medical sector. Amongst the critical roles the Nurses assume include taking care of the patients in hospitals and sometimes at home, also referred to as home nursing. Nurses also assist in managing health centers. However, members practicing this profession are faced with numerous challenges and limitations in their day-to-day work. This article will seek to expound on the challenge of staffing, especially with regards to nursing to patient ratio. According to Kelly Gooch (2015), short staffing is one of the most challenging issues affecting nurses today. The nurse to patient ratio has jeopardized many patients’ health and also to a large extent undermined the working conditions of the nurses. Nurse to patient ratio can simply be described as the number of hours nursing professionals are assigned to each patient. Today, patients seem to take longer than before and for some, their health deteriorates mainly because of poor attendance and lack of attention by nurses. Low-staffing levels or instances where there are fewer nurses than the number of patients often leads to the worsening conditions of patients and ultimately death. Another issue often associated with low-staffing levels is that some patients are sent home prematurely with little know-how of self-protection. A majority of these patients often turn up in the same hospitals, but in worse conditions than before. Additionally, monitoring is also a problem and many patients, especially the ones suffering from conditions such as diabetes end up in worse conditions than before. For a condition such as diabetes, patients are expected to observe a certain thing's failure to which their condition worsens. However, with fewer nurses, the mortality rate rises and a disease like diabetes becomes a major pandemic. High nurse-to-patient ratio also personally impacts nurses and leaves th...