NURS 6053 week 3 Discussion: Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues

NURS 6053 week 3 Discussion: Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues

Discussion: Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues
Quite often, nurse leaders are faced with ethical dilemmas, such as those associated with choices between competing needs and limited resources. Resources are finite, and competition for those resources occurs daily in all organizations.

For example, the use of 12-hour shifts has been a strategy to retain nurses. However, evidence suggests that as nurses work more hours in a shift, they commit more errors. How do effective leaders find a balance between the needs of the organization and the needs of ensuring quality, effective, and safe patient care?

In this Discussion, you will reflect on a national healthcare issue and examine how competing needs may impact the development of polices to address that issue. NURS 6053 week 3 Discussion: Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues

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To Prepare:

Review the Resources and think about the national healthcare issue/stressor you previously selected for study in Module 1.
Reflect on the competing needs in healthcare delivery as they pertain to the national healthcare issue/stressor you previously examined.
By Day 3 of Week 3
Post an explanation of how competing needs, such as the needs of the workforce, resources, and patients, may impact the development of policy. Then, describe any specific competing needs that may impact the national healthcare issue/stressor you selected. What are the impacts, and how might policy address these competing needs? Be specific and provide examples. NURS 6053 week 3 Discussion: Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues. NURS 6053 week 3 Discussion: Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues

Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues

How competing needs may impact the development of a policy

Competing needs, such as the needs of patients, workforce, and resources may impact the development of a policy because the competing needs should align with the agenda that policy is advocating for.   For example, a policy addressing adequate nurse staffing is required to meet the patient and workforce needs while minimizing financial cost.  According to Lopez et al (2015), .the effective utilization and deployment of the workforce are of great importance to ensure efficient delivery of healthcare services in terms of quantity, quality, and cost.

Failure effectively deploys and utilizing the workforce to do so might lead to a shortage or oversupply of clinical staff. For example, an oversupply of clinical staff might result in economic inefficiencies along with misallocated resources under the guise of adequate staffing. The shortage of staff is connected with numerous negative impacts, including lower quality and quantity of care because there are few resources to offer the essential services; work overload of the available nurses leading to burnout, eventually compromising patient safety; and longer waiting times as a result of inadequate staff leading to preventable patient deaths (Lopez et al, 2015).

Specific competing needs that may impact workload

A good fit between nursing staff and patients’ needs are specific competing needs that may impact workload as a national healthcare issue Organizations are exploring schemes of ensuring a good balance amid nursing staff expertise and size and patient needs so as to ensure quality and safe care along with outstanding services to patients while ensuring operating costs are sustainable (van den Oetelaar et al, 2016).

van den Oetelaar et al (2016) claim that nursing capacity should be optimally matched to the needs of patients which is achievable through a sensible and fair distribution of nurses in units, leading to a workload that is equally distributed and manageable for the nursing staff. This necessitates a good balance between nursing staff and patients’ needs. One scheme of ensuring an appropriate balance is the managing workload for nursing staff. This assists balance the needed resources with the available resources, which in turn averts additional costs for overstaffing a unit and averts a decline in employee engagement or patient experiences by understaffing a unit. NURS 6053 week 3 Discussion: Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues

The impacts and how policy might address these competing needs

Workload has an impact on both patient and staff needs as well as an organization’s resources.  High causes burnout which leads to errors and poor patient outcomes. High workload also has an impact on nurse job dissatisfaction and burnout, and the intention of nurses to leave. High nursing staff turnover resulting in increased costs for using temporary employees or training new nurses (van den Oetelaar et al, 2016).

A policy might address these competing needs by ensuring an optimal nurse to patient ratio which can improve nurse staffing in organizations and improved care outcomes for patients. The policy can outline a particular nurse to patient ratio depending on the type of unit within a healthcare facility.  For instance, the ratio for a surgical and medical unit can be 5: 1, meaning one nurse will be assigned to five patients at most, while in the intensive unit ratio can be 2:1.  As suggested by Livanos (2015), having a staffing policy in a facility can improve the working conditions for the nursing staff as well as the superiority and safety of care.  In turn, costs of adhering to the ratios can be offset by, less need for training new nurses or temporary nurses and reduced turnover of the nursing staff. NURS 6053 week 3 Discussion: Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues

References

Livanos, N. (2018). A Broadening Coalition: Patient Safety Enters the Nurse-To-Patient Ration Debate. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 9(1), 68-70.

Lopes, M., Almeida, A., & Almada-Lobo, B. (2015). Handling healthcare workforce planning with care: where do we stand? Human Resources for Health13:38.

van den Oetelaar, van Stel, H., Van Rhenen W, et al. (2016).  Balancing nurses’ workload in hospital wards: study protocol of developing a method to manage workload. BMJ Open, 6 (11), e012148. NURS 6053 week 3 Discussion: Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues