Patient safety is one of the chief determinants of quality of care. Despite significant efforts on the part of healthcare providers, systemic flaws still result in adverse health outcomes. The following paper provides an overview of the most common threats to patient safety and establishes a correlation between them and a shortage of nursing staff.
A significant proportion of individuals admitted to hospitals suffer from the exacerbation of their health conditions. Patient falls are among the most significant contributors to the issue due to a variety of health effects created by it. Despite the availability of comprehensive fall prevention programs, the issue still poses a feasible threat. One of the possible reasons for it is the shortage of nursing staff. According to the case study conducted by Ireland, Kirkpatrick, Boblin, and Robertson (2013), the shortage of staff lead to the inability of the practitioners to effectively implement and maintain the necessary level of compliance with the guidelines of the programs. In other words, the variability in the efficiency of fall prevention practices can be reduced through several approaches, including the assessment of task distribution and sharing among the personnel (Bradley et al., 2015).
Care-associated infection is another major gap in the quality of care. While studies on the matter are scarce, it is possible to establish an indirect connection between an infection rate and a shortage of nurses. According to the reports on working conditions from 12 European countries, the nurses who work in properly staffed facilities tend to describe their patients as having a low risk of incurring the infection (Aiken, Sloane, Bruyneel, Van den Heede, & Sermeus, 2013). Besides, understaffing-related burnout among nurses is known to create poorer patient outcomes, including the increased occurrence of infections in the setting (Nantsupawat, Nantsupawat, Kunaviktikul, Turale, & Poghosyan, 2016). Thus, it would be reasonable to conclude that nurse shortages hurt patient outcomes, by increasing the risk of patient falls and infection.
One of the ways to mitigate the effects of understaffing is the empowerment of staff in the setting. By extension, empowerment requires the recognition of the power of nurses’ relationships and an appropriate workplace climate. The former can be perceived as consisting of three components. The first is control over the content of practice. In my workplace, control over this domain is achieved by providing a reasonable degree of autonomy to nurses and encouragement to act by regard to individual judgment and knowledge (Manojlovich, 2007). The second component is control over the context of nursing practice and is usually achieved by promoting meaningful participation of nurses in the facility’s affairs (Clavelle, O’Grady, & Drenkard, 2013). Admittedly, this component is harder to assess due to differences in individual perception. I feel confident that my decisions are supported by the management and contribute to the solution of issues on hand. Thus, it would be safe to state that I have at least partial control over the context of nursing practice. Finally, the third component is control over the competence of nursing practice, which is typically achieved through education and training. The existence of this domain in my organization can be confirmed through the availability of training programs and workshops intended to address gaps in nursing expertise.
As can be seen from the information above, my organization provides employees with all three domains of nursing power. Admittedly, some of the conclusions would require in-depth research to be confirmed. Nevertheless, the initial assessment suggests a favorable workplace environment, and, by extension, lower risk of negative patient outcomes associated with workplace stress.
References
Aiken, L. H., Sloane, D. M., Bruyneel, L., Van den Heede, K., & Sermeus, W. (2013). Nurses’ reports of working conditions and hospital quality of care in 12 countries in Europe. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 50(2), 143-153.
Bradley, S., Kamwendo, F., Chipeta, E., Chimwaza, W., de Pinho, H., & McAuliffe, E. (2015). Too few staff, too many patients: A qualitative study of the impact on obstetric care providers and on quality of care in Malawi. BMC pregnancy and childbirth, 15(1), 65-75.
Clavelle, J. T., O’Grady, T. P., & Drenkard, K. (2013). Structural empowerment and the nursing practice environment in Magnet organizations. Journal of Nursing Administration, 43(11), 566-573.
Ireland, S., Kirkpatrick, H., Boblin, S., & Robertson, K. (2013). The real world journey of implementing fall prevention best practices in three acute care hospitals: A case study. Worldviews on Evidence‐Based Nursing, 10(2), 95-103.
Manojlovich, M. (2007). Power and empowerment in nursing: Looking backward to inform the future. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 12(1), 1-8.
Nantsupawat, A., Nantsupawat, R., Kunaviktikul, W., Turale, S., & Poghosyan, L. (2016). Nurse burnout, nurse-reported quality of care, and patient outcomes in Thai hospitals. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 48(1), 83-90.