Introduction
We covered the nurse shortage and organizational impacts in the preceding section. We will identify and describe two conflicting nurse shortage issues in this section. We will also ethically evaluate a relevant organization policy or practice that affects the nurse shortage. Finally, we will suggest policy or practice modifications to balance conflicting demands and resolve ethical issues.
Competing Needs Impacting the Nursing Shortage:
Patient Demand for Quality treatment: Healthcare businesses face a growing demand for quality treatment from patients. Qualified nurses are needed to provide safe and effective healthcare (Haryanto, 2019). However, the nurse shortage makes it difficult to satisfy this demand, resulting in longer wait times, worse patient satisfaction, and worse patient outcomes.
Employee Well-being and Worker Satisfaction: Nurses’ well-being and happiness are essential for motivated and engaged staff. Due to their hard jobs, nurses frequently experience burnout, compassion fatigue, and stress (Haryanto, 2019). Ensuring nurses enjoy a happy work environment, fair workloads, and professional development opportunities is a competing demand.
Policy/Practice Affecting Nursing Shortage
Mandatory overtime may impact the nurse shortage. In certain hospitals, nurses must work extra to compensate for staffing shortfalls. While this strategy may appear essential to satisfy patient demand, it may negatively impact nurse well-being, work-life balance, and patient safety. Nurse tiredness, medical mistakes, and work dissatisfaction may result from overtime (Yahya Muabbar & Zayyan Alsharqi, 2020).
Critique of the Ethical Considerations Policy:
The forced overtime regulation raises ethical questions about nurses’ and patients’ safety. Due to required overtime, nurses may become physically and mentally exhausted, affecting their treatment. Nurses’ work-life balance may suffer due to continuous overtime, causing personal and familial concerns (Yahya Muabbar & Zayyan Alsharqi, 2020). Fatigue-related mistakes may compromise patient safety and care.
Strengths and Challenges of the Existing Policy in Promoting Ethics:
Strengths:
Staffing shortages and patient demand.
Ensuring adequate manpower to sustain operations.
Challenges:
Compromising nurse well-being, work-life balance, and job satisfaction.
Medical blunders and patient safety.
Undermining the organization’s nurse recruitment and retention.
Recommendations for Policy/Practice Changes:
Implement Flexible Work Schedules: Give nurses greater discretion over their shifts to promote a healthy work-life balance. Patient demand and staff well-being may be met with this strategy (Yahya Muabbar & Zayyan Alsharqi, 2020).
Enhance Recruitment and Retention Strategies: Create complete recruitment and retention initiatives that incentivize nurses to join and remain. Tuition reimbursement, further education grants, and job promotion may be offered via these programs (Yahya Muabbar & Zayyan Alsharqi, 2020).
Professional growth: Provide resources for nurses’ continued professional growth. Training, mentoring, and leadership development are examples. Nurses’ work satisfaction and patient care increase when they are empowered to learn (Yahya Muabbar & Zayyan Alsharqi, 2020).
Foster Collaborative Care Models: Use multidisciplinary teams of nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and other healthcare professionals. Without depending on nurses, this strategy may assist in dispersing the effort and meeting patient demand (Yahya Muabbar & Zayyan Alsharqi, 2020).
Conclusion:
Addressing patient demand for excellent treatment and staff well-being is essential to addressing the nurse shortage. By critically analyzing policies and procedures, healthcare organizations may find areas for improvement and make changes that balance these conflicting objectives while preserving ethical standards. Creating a supportive work environment for nurses, improving patient care, and reducing the nursing shortage’s effect on healthcare organizations should start with the policy and practice reforms above.
References
Haryanto, M. (2019). Nursing Shortage. Orthopaedic Nursing, 38(1), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1097/nor.0000000000000535
Yahya Muabbar, H., & Zayyan Alsharqi, O. (2020). The Impact of Short-Term Solutions to Nursing Shortage on Nursing Outcome, Nurse Perceived Quality of Care, and Patient Safety. American Journal of Nursing Research, 9(2), 35–44. https://doi.org/10.12691/ajnr-9-2-1
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