Introduction
Nursing is a profession in the health care department responsible for taking care of patients and ensuring their comfort while in the hospital vicinity. Nurses perform duties such as feeding the patients, administering drugs, and ensuring they have a conducive environment for recuperation. Their greatest responsibility is with the inpatients, but they also work with the outpatients in cases where they are required to measure their blood pressure levels, body temperature, and other such elements. One of the issues affecting the nursing environment in the health care system is the nurse-patient ratio. This refers to the number of patients allocated to one nurse, about the type of diagnoses.
Body
An effective nursing environment requires that the nurse should have enough time with the patient so that he/ she can attend to all their needs. This however is not the case, owing to the increasing number of patients in hospitals today. The lifestyles most people have adopted promote poor health habits hence increasing cases of diseases. A good example is the rising cases of different kinds of cancers. In the earlier years, this condition was unheard of and the few cases were mostly found in the elderly. This has however changed since cancer is the condition that most people are living with now. This means that chemotherapy has become famous and requires that more nurses be deployed in these areas, which is not the case. Therefore, the few who are there are being overworked hence being less productive.
Patients suffering from such conditions which in most cases are considered terminal require special attention since most of them suffer from stigmatization. They need counseling and this can only be possible if the nurse-patient ratio allows the nurse sufficient time. Besides these cases, many other traumatized patients in the hospital need special attention. These include patients who have gone through domestic violence, fatal accidents, and other traumatizing events such as infernos. If not given proper psychological attention, most of these patients normally end up with suicidal or developmental problems. This explains the importance of having enough nursing staff that will have sufficient time with the patients, understand their needs and be able to attend to them without causing more emotional pain.
Having a small number of nurses in a healthcare facility translates to more hours of work. This means that nurses will be forced to spend more time at work especially when there are emergency cases. This also reduces their productivity hence making them ineffective and the result of it all is unsatisfied patients. Lack of rest normally translates to fatigue which mostly causes emotional imbalance, and this explains why some nurses treat their patients harshly. Nurses are expected to be sober since in most cases they are dealing with people who are not stable emotionally. Patients can be annoying for example when they refuse to take medicine or food necessary for their recovery. It, therefore, requires an emotionally stable person to deal with them since the most important goal is for them to get well and go home.
Conclusion
In conclusion, therefore, health care facilities should increase the number of nursing staff to improve the services being offered to the patients. They could be having all the facilities they need but offer poor services owing to less motivated staff. Staff motivation in this case narrows down to enough resting time which translates to having enough staff within the facility. Patients undergoing special treatments such as chemotherapy should be assigned a specific nurse who will be able to attend to them at whatever time they need the attention. This can only happen if the supply of nurses exceeds the demand.