{"id":2565,"date":"2022-11-09T16:30:08","date_gmt":"2022-11-09T23:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildirismedicaleducation.com\/blog\/?p=2565"},"modified":"2022-12-07T12:01:06","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T19:01:06","slug":"short-staffed-nursing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildirismedicaleducation.com\/blog\/short-staffed-nursing","title":{"rendered":"Short-Staffed Nursing, High Workloads, and Long Hours"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Krystle Maynard, DNP, MSN, RN, SANE-A<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nursing is one of the most challenging and rewarding career paths. But working as a nurse can be exhausting due to understaffing, long working hours, and being overworked. Burnout and compassion fatigue<\/a> are on the rise among nurses. To address this issue, it’s important to provide nurses with adequate resources to manage their mental health<\/a> and stress<\/a> levels. How can we help ease the burden on nurses in healthcare? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nurses are the backbone of the healthcare team. They entered the profession wanting to help people. Though this motivation remains their driving force, nurses need support, better staffing, and more resources to be their best and to provide the best care to patients and their loved ones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Staffing Ratios<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nurses are pivotal in providing safe, quality patient care. While primary care providers are responsible for making medical diagnoses and treatment decisions, their time with each patient is substantially limited. It’s the bedside nurse who most often performs physical assessments, administers medications, monitors vital signs and lab results, identifies symptoms of deterioration, and more. In this way, nurses are central to all patient care. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ability to detect early signs of patient deterioration is only one of the nursing roles that can be severely impacted by inadequate staffing. Despite countless studies demonstrating the direct correlation between inadequate staffing ratios and increased patient safety events, errors<\/a>, and mortality and morbidity rates, only two states have adopted mandated nurse-to-patient ratios. According to the American Nurses Association<\/a>, only 16 total states address nurse staffing in some capacity through laws and regulations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"One<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For many nurses, being assigned a large number of patients can easily lead to stress and anxiety as they envision a long day of running nonstop from patient to patient with no time for a break and barely enough time to document. Under such conditions, patient care can easily suffer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Patient-Related Workload and Acuity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Mandated nurse-to-patient ratios are a goal worth fighting for, but nurses and healthcare allies cannot stop there. Ratios may limit the number of patients a nurse is responsible for, but another factor that must be considered is patient-related workload and acuity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research shows<\/a> that many factors must be used to determine a patient’s acuity and the nursing time required to care for that patient. Such indicators include vital signs to be monitored (and their frequency), respiratory and cardiac assessment, fluid volume status, acid-base balance, oxygenation, drains\/lines\/tubes, complex wound management, isolation, mental status, communication barriers, and much more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each patient has varying degrees of disease complexity and, thus, may require different degrees of time and attention by each nurse. Imagine a nurse with five patients in a busy medical-surgical unit, each at a different acuity level and requiring a different workload. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such high patient workloads are a common occurrence in healthcare, with a typical assignment on a medical-surgical unit being 4-6 patients per nurse. For each patient, the nurse must complete the following tasks each shift:<\/p>\n\n\n\n