Add a section to the paper you submitted in Module 1. The new section should address the following:
Identify and describe at least two competing needs: (nurse shortage/workload and safe patient care) impacting your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
Describe a relevant policy or practice in your organization that may influence your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
Critique the policy for ethical considerations, and explain the policy’s strengths and challenges in promoting ethics.
Recommend one or more policy or practice changes designed to balance the competing needs of resources, workers, and patients, while addressing any ethical shortcomings of the existing policies. Be specific and provide examples.
Cite evidence that informs the healthcare issue/stressor and/or the policies, and provide two scholarly resources in support of your policy or practice recommendations.
Effects of Nurses Workload/shortage and Safe Patient Care/handling
Two Competing Needs Related to Nurses’ Workload and Shortages
Competing needs within a healthcare organization can prevent it from meeting all the requirements necessary for maintaining the desired quality standards. In an organization where nurses’ workload and shortages are the main stressors, the two competing needs related to the organization are; the need to improve clinician experience by eliminating workload and the need to maintain safe patient care (Sharifi et al., 2020). The organization is faced with the challenge of creating a balance between these two competing needs amidst the operational challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Organizational Policies that May Influence Nurses’ Workload and Shortages
The organization has developed a health policy that it is currently using to address the problem of nurses’ workload and shortage. The facility is using an on-call policy to support the remaining staff to handle the existing workload and meet changing healthcare needs. Under its on-call policy, the organization employs flexible staffing approaches where temporary staff stay at home and are called upon when they are required to handle emergencies outside working hours (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, 2017).
Ethical Considerations of the Policy, Including Its Strengths and Challenges in Promoting Ethic
Healthcare organizations should make appropriate ethical considerations whenever they are developing policies to address potential stressors. The on-call policy currently used by the organization is unethical in that it denies nurses the freedom to choose the most appropriate hours to work. They are unable to develop daily plans of activities and might be forced to work under pressure in times of crisis and during odd hours (Morley et al., 2020). Although the primary strength of the policy is that it allows the organization to minimize harm for patients, it does not promote ethics for the nursing staff that are hired under the on-call policy.
Recommendations
The best recommendation for the organization is to utilize a permanent staffing policy. When it employs permanent staff, the facility will be able to balance the competing needs of resources, employees, and patients while also addressing the ethical challenges caused by the current on-call policy (Saville et al., 2021). For example, permanent nurses will be prepared whenever they are on duty to provide care to patients, thereby addressing the uncertainties caused by temporary staffing.
References
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. (2017). On-call policy and procedure for professional support staff. https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/sites/default/files/On_Call_Policy_PSP_Policy_Procedure.pdf
Morley, G., Grady, C., McCarthy, J., & Ulrich, C. M. (2020). Covid-19: Ethical challenges for nurses. The Hastings Center Report, 50(3), 35–39. https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.1110
Saville, C., Monks, T., Griffiths, P., & Ball, J. E. (2021). Costs and consequences of using average demand to plan baseline nurse staffing levels: a computer simulation study. BMJ Quality & Safety, 30(1), 7–16. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2019-010569
Sharifi, M., Asadi-Pooya, A. A., & Mousavi-Roknabadi, R. S. (2020). Burnout among healthcare providers of COVID-19: a systematic review of epidemiology and recommendations. Archives of Academic Emergency Medicine, 9(1), e7. https://doi.org/10.22037/aaem.v9i1.1004