Nurses: Critical Care, Fatigue & Stress- Minimizing Turnover & Boosting Satisfaction - Essay Sample

Introduction

Nurses contribute to various professional roles in their cooperation with patients, families, and other healthcare professionals. Inadequate nurses may lead to poor treatment quality due to the demanding critical care in numerous sections of the healthcare. A nurse might encounter fatigue or stress in situations that have a high demand for attention, which may result in errors in medication. It is vital to minimize the rates of turnover and boost nursing satisfaction by incorporating research models with the execution of Evidence-Based Practice (Norwood, 2010). Utilizing the Stetler model will enable in the evaluation of nurse to patient ratio in healthcare. The model comprises of distinct phases such as preparation, validation, comparative assessment and decision making, translation and application, and evaluation.

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Preparation

The preparation stage begins with the formulation of the PICOT question, which includes population, intervention, comparison, outcome, and time. The population of this EBP is Nurses in healthcare; intervention is the execution of motivation factors. The comparison is nurses and patients, the outcome is a balanced workload, and the time is the period spent in healthcare. The focus is that burnout in nurse's links to the reduction of care quality and augmenting the risk of a patient to infections. High workload as a result of inappropriate care level leads to the feeling of exhaustion both emotionally and physically, resulting in high job dissatisfaction and turnover within healthcare (Dabney& Kalisch, 2015). Thus, there is a necessity for identifying appropriate nurse-patient ratios to patient outcomes and nursing burnout. Safe nurse staffing boosts outcomes for healthcare organizations, patients, and nurses. The notion that amplified collaboration can result in more reliable care is an essential influence sphere. Thus, reasonable nurse to patient ration leads to the provision of quality care and patient safety.

Validation

I performed a broad literature search to determine the connection between nursing workload and burnout. Databases incorporated in the search were web search and scholarly nursing journal articles. Within the various search engines, the common keywords utilized include nurse to patient ratio, nurse workload, nurse burnout, and nurse staffing. The goal of the research was to transfer to proper levels of staffing, depending on the nurse's workload. Inclusion search criteria included peer-reviewed, scholarly journals, and years from 2010-2016 for the search engine. However, numerous articles were firstly recognized; I chose a finalized number of four articles that focused on Evidence-Based Practice in regards to nursing staffing and burnout. Also, the exclusion criteria comprised of materials that did not contain EBP. After a preliminary literature search, the literature proved that Workload Measurement System was effective in helping measure the nursing amount of work. Giving nurses a voice in regards to the patient workload by utilizing a workload instrument enables caregivers to validate when a patient is in a critical position and can move the patient to a suitable level of care (Norwood, 2010). The validation in regards to appropriate care level upsurges nurses' outlooks of empowerment; hence it should eventually minimize burnout scores and emotional exhaustion.

Comparative Assessment and Decision Making

The evaluation and decision-making stage is vital for rationally establishing the summarized outcomes from the deployed sources. In this stage, appeal and feasibility must be determined relating to the validation findings. Therefore, during this stage, the errors in medications are on the intensification with increases in nurse-to-patient ratios (Martin, 2015). Reduced nurse-to-patient rates result in inadequate care associated with repositioning, late medication administration, and ambulation. Insufficient staffing increases the caregivers' workload, job dissatisfaction, and generates a higher turnover and rates of burnout. Also, inadequate staffing can result in higher mortality rates and poor outcomes of the patient. Adverse responses increase the costs of healthcare. Adjusting the levels of staffing can enhance the quality of patient care and boost nurse satisfaction. Adverse outcomes impact higher expenses in the hospitals as the organization desire to maximize profits by restraining nursing staff; however, they end up establishing more budgetary challenges. There is a risk of increasing frustrations to the nurses; thus, it is vital to offer education and assessments as a method of evaluating the staff members.

Translation and Application

Unsafe nursing to patient ratios impacts care practice by positioning patients at risk for problems due to limited care. Implementing Working Measurement System (WMS) in healthcare will help in weighing the workload. The WMS is a guide for appropriate patient placement according to the workload of nurses. Providing education to physicians concerning nursing workload and the WMS helps to integrate the execution of WMS for proper patient transfer. There should exist a decline in staff workload to ensure protected time for healthcare providers to enhance their search and vital appraisal skills (Norwood, 2010). Consideration of nurses, management, and supervisors collaborating ensures the attainment of the implementation and modification criterion. The healthcare organization should train the nurses based on how to measure patients' workload to meet the requirements. These operations have proved to be quality mechanisms for ensuring safe nurse to patient ratio.

Evaluation

The evaluation stage entails the use of informal and formal assessments of exercising the outcomes into practice. It is essential to evaluate the cost-benefits of the evaluation, along with the data credibility. It measures any variation in nursing burnout scores after the execution of the EBP. Also, nurses should provide feedback regarding the effectiveness of WMS. With a positive outcome, there is a likelihood that the level of modification will be intensified to the facility to offer nurse to patient ratio in healthcare. If the organization proves to be effective, the ultimate level of transformation would require the implementation of WMS to all members of the healthcare. However, higher ratios of nurses' response to stressors in the working environment may upsurge the feeling of exhaustion. Higher nurse-to-patient rates result in more stress on the job leading to nursing burnout. Thus, negative stressors of the environment burdened by the caregiver can adversely influence the care delivery to the patient and their results (Gray & Kerfoot, 2016). There exist a lower perception of patients regarding quality care due to inadequate exposure to a nurse. Lower patient ratios would enable the caregiver to have more time to train patients, families, and other people on goal attainment methods and health maintenance.

Conclusion

Low levels of staffing are a significant challenge within the healthcare industry, leading to poor quality of care and patient safety, reduction in job satisfaction, and a higher level of legal insinuations in health care. The organization and the patient outcome will increase through the implementation of appropriate nurse-to-patient ratios. Safer staffing ratios will enable nurses to deliver better care to patients and help them exercise the best practices. The augmented nurse-nurse association minimizes stress, enhances morale, and patient safety. Providing WMS to nurses helps measure the amount of workload hence enabling to improve the healthcare to a professional practice environment and influence the healthcare providers to enhance their capability to work effectively. The Stetler model ensured the effective execution of the evidence-based practice process by utilizing each stage in the research.

References

Dabney, B. W., & Kalisch, B. J. (2015). Nurse staffing levels and patient-reported missed nursing care. doi:10.1097/NCQ.0000000000000123

Gray, J., & Kerfoot, K. (2016). Expanding the parameters for excellence in patient assignments. doi:10.1097/NAQ.0000000000000138.

Martin, C. J. (2015). The effects of nurse staffing on quality of care. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+effects+of+nurse+staffing+on+quality+of+care.-a0411470286

Norwood, S. L. (2010). Research essentials Foundations for evidence-based practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.