Unfortunately, there is a plethora of issues related to nursing staffing in many hospitals in the state of Florida at the present moment. People who work at medical institutions are concerned about their job safety due to various dangers that their workplaces present to the health of personnel. The policy-priority issue that will be discussed in the following context refers to the professional safety of nurses and their assistants during their working hours. There are several dangerous factors that might have an adverse impact on the health conditions of medical personnel: unsafe injection equipment, workplace violence, contacts with infected patients, hazardous chemicals, and the possibility of influenza occurrence. The name of the legislator, who is intended to help with various problems that emerge because of the difficulty mentioned above, is Jose Javier Rodriguez (a senator). The following paper intends to discuss and analyze the issue of nurses’ safety at their hospitals or other clinics.
Key Points
The Worksheet #1 sections below are supposed to identify the primary concerns of nurses who are obliged to deal and face unsafe working conditions on a daily basis:
- Nursing staff safety (environmental issue) remains a public-health policy concern that the majority of medical workers are familiar with due to particular dangerous factors presented by their profession (Chiang, Hsiao, & Lee, 2017). Different hospitals’ workers consider the problem mentioned above to be significant because it might damage their health and cause harm to their bodies.
- The specific problem and background of the nurses’ workplace safety issue is the fact that many medical personnel members have certain health difficulties or biases that they face circumstantially. There is a need for change in existing law that must address and regulate all the norms that are supposed to protect nurses from working in dangerous conditions. For instance, it would be proper to create a law that restricts nurses from working with hazardous chemicals without appropriate equipment and safety measures (Lievens & Vlerick, 2013). Such a strategy might reduce the number of risks that medical workers deal with on a regular basis. Perhaps, there is no need to write a new law. Instead, existing rules and standards should be revised and adjusted to the needs of nurses. Indeed, some regulatory issues should be changed as well to increase the control over medical personnel and prevent unfortunate outcomes. Lievens and Vlerick (2013) claim that nursing is considered to be a dangerous job and requires extra attention to different professional activities performed by medical workers.
- Unsafe nursing is prevalent in the context of patient handling, injection equipment, violence, influenza, and hazardous chemicals. The primary goal of the considered policy is to prevent and eliminate multiple factors that negatively influence nurses’ working environment. There are many options that might be adopted in the given case. For instance, giving medical personnel a choice not to complete their duties that might cause harm to their health. However, the recommended solution is to develop particular safety measures and standards that should be followed by every medical worker when accomplishing and dealing with dangerous tasks. For instance, it would be beneficial for nurses to wear and use specific equipment when working with hazardous chemicals. Such a rule has to be developed and officially accepted by the chosen legislator.
- Unfortunately, the issue of nurses’ unsafe working conditions is not resolved yet. However, many organizations and scholars are concerned with this question, and they seek methods to eliminate it. The website of American Nurses Association provides status updates and alerts regarding the described problem. Various scholars who collaborate with this organization develop sound theories that might be helpful in resolving the issue of medical workers’ health conditions (Chiang et al., 2017). There are many articles as to the possible cases that should be avoided by nurses at their hospitals to prevent particular unfortunate outcomes (Beus, Mccord, & Zohar, 2016).
- The issue of nurses’ job safety involves the state level of government (Florida). As there are many patients in Miami with such viruses as HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis (A, B, and C) and other diseases, nurses should be careful with their clients to remain healthy in the future as they have a permanent risk of being infected when treating these individuals (Phillips, Conaway, Parker, Perry, & Jagger, 2013).
- As it is mentioned above, Jose Javier Rodriguez (a senator from Miami) can be helpful in solving the issue discussed above. Therefore, nurses should contact this man to contribute to their workplace safety issue’s elimination.
Empirical Evidence Analysis
Phillips et al. (2013) are concerned with the issue of sharps injury at the workplaces of medical personnel. The scholars created a study that includes the statistical data of eighty-five hospitals (some of them are located in Miami). Fortunately, the number of people who happened to deal with the given problem has been decreasing since 2001 till 2005. “Concomitant with the decrease in rates, the proportion of injuries from safety-engineered devices nearly tripled (P <.001) across all denominators” (Phillips et al., 2013, p. 936). Phillips et al. (2013) estimated that the reduction of more than one hundred thousand sharps injuries saves about two hundred thousand dollars every year.
In turn, Powell-Cope et al. (2014) claim that there is a plethora of injury cases that occur due to inappropriate and unsafe patient handling techniques by nurses. The scholars also state that it is essential to be careful will all the hospitals’ clients as these people might be dangerous for people who surround them. If there are particular risks, there should be no physical contacts with medical workers. “Three organizational risk factors, bed days of care, facility complexity level, and baseline MSI incidence rate, were significantly associated with MSI incidence rate and explained 21% of its variation“ (Powell-Cope et al., 2014, p. 529). Moreover, nurses are obliged to wear specific clothes to protect themselves from being infected.
The Importance and Impact of Policy-Priority Issue
As it is possible to see from the studies above, the issues of nurses’ unsafe working conditions are prevalent in Miami at the present moment. It is essential to address the given problem immediately. Otherwise, medical personnel members might be afraid to continue their professional careers due to the increased risk of being infected with particular viruses (Lievens & Vlerick, 2013). All these factors might have an adverse impact on the medical system in the state of Florida in general. The government should support its employees and provide comfortable working conditions to people who risk their health on a daily basis.
Conclusion
There is a plethora of risks that nurses might face at their workplaces (unsafe injection equipment, workplace violence, physical contacts with patients, hazardous chemicals, and the possibility of influenza occurrence). Unfortunately, this problem is currently prevalent in medical institutions of Miami and Florida in general. To address and eliminate the discussed issue, the basic safety measures should be given to Jose Javier Rodriguez (a local legislator) for him to consider these solutions and create appropriate regulations.
References
Beus, J. M., Mccord, M. A., & Zohar, D. (2016). Workplace safety. Organizational Psychology Review, 6(4), 352-381. Web.
Chiang, H., Hsiao, Y., & Lee, H. (2017). Predictors of hospital nursesʼ safety practices: Work environment, workload, job satisfaction, and error reporting. Journal of Nursing Care Quality, 32(4), 359-368. Web.
Lievens, I., & Vlerick, P. (2013). Transformational leadership and safety performance among nurses: The mediating role of knowledge-related job characteristics. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 70(3), 651-661. Web.
Phillips, E. K., Conaway, M., Parker, G., Perry, J., & Jagger, J. (2013). Issues in understanding the impact of the needlestick safety and prevention act on hospital sharps injuries. Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, 34(09), 935-939. Web.
Powell-Cope, G., Toyinbo, P., Patel, N., Rugs, D., Elnitsky, C., Hahm, B.,… Hodgson, M. (2014). Effects of a national safe patient handling program on nursing injury incidence rates. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 44(10), 525-534. Web.