The research paper discusses how nurse staffing affects patient recovery time. The identified PICOT question is “In hospital patients, what is the effect of appropriate nurse staffing compared to a large number of patients per nurse on reduction of patient recovery time within three months period?”. The research question is related to the problem of staff deficiencies. The latter results from the reduced funding, aging labor force, expansion of patient intricacy, and an increase in the number of elderly patients.
The conducted analysis of academic literature reveals that scholars emphasize that nurse staffing strongly correlates with the patient recovery time and quality of the provided care. This claim could be found in the previously revised articles of Hockenberry and Becker (2016), Kim and Bae (2018), Baker, Canvin, and Berzins (2019), and MacPhee, Dahinten, and Havaei (2017). Even though these papers’ research questions and research methods are different, all of them propose the same idea: the staff shortage and excessive workload of nurses make the patients worse off.
Taking into consideration the conducted analysis, it becomes apparent that most of the hospitals require changes. First of all, there is a correlation between the length of working hours and patients mortality rates. According to the investigation conducted by Trinkoff et al. (2011), the longer working hours are, the bigger the frequency of patients deaths. Therefore, the administration of a hospital should actively engage nurses in discussing their working schedule to make it comfortable and efficient. Besides, healthcare policy-makers should be concerned with the reduction of nurse understaffing because it is a reason for their excessive workload and overtime working. The improvements in nurse staffing are of particular importance because this is a way to increase the effectiveness of healthcare outcomes.
References
Baker, J. A., Canvin, K., & Berzins, K. (2019). The relationship between workforce characteristics and perception of quality of care in mental health: A qualitative study. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 100, 103412. Web.
Hockenberry, J. M., & Becker, E. R. (2016). How do hospital nurse staffing strategies affect patient satisfaction? ILR Review, 69(4), 890–910.
Kim, C.-G., & Bae, K.-S. (2018). Relationship between nurse staffing level and adult nursing-sensitive outcomes in tertiary hospitals of Korea: Retrospective observational study. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 80, 155–164. Web.
MacPhee, M., Dahinten, V., & Havaei, F. (2017). The impact of heavy perceived nurse workloads on patient and nurse outcomes. Administrative Sciences, 7(1), 7. Web.
Trinkoff, A. M., Johantgen, M., Storr, C. L., Gurses, A. P., Liang, Y., & Han, K. (2011). Nurses’ work schedule characteristics, nurse staffing, and patient mortality. Nursing research, 60(1), 1-8. Web.