Improving the Nurse-Patient Ratio
Reasons for Concern
A sharp change in the nurse-patient ratio, which typically declines with the increase in the number of the latter, affects both parties significantly. First and most obvious, a drop in the number of nurses presupposes that the quality of the services provided is going to decline correspondingly. For instance, the waiting time is likely to rise.
Apart from a patient, the change in question affects a nurse negatively as well. For example, the issue regarding the workplace burnout (Talsma et al., 2014) deserves to be brought up as a truly disastrous effect thereof. According to the existing definition, the subject matter causes a significant reduction in motivation and may even trigger depression in a nurse.
Nursing Organizations to Be Involved
To make sure that the rights of nurses are complied with and that the staff has enough time for recreation and rest, several control tools have to be introduced in the target environment, namely, the Organization of Nurse Executives. The latter controls the nurse staffing ratio (Gale & Beal, 2013). Therefore, making sure that the rights of both patients and nurses should be acknowledged.
Three Actions to Take
To improve the current nurse staffing ratio, one will have to redesign the schedule, redistribute responsibilities among the staff, introduce the technology that will help make certain tasks such as data management easier, and hire more nurses. While the latter action is likely to cause extra costs (particularly, the staff salary payment), it will definitely take some pressure off of the facility members. As a result, the workplace burnout rates are going to drop significantly.
Identifying the Tuberculosis Risks
High Risk Factors
Although it is the direct exposure to the TB virus that is viewed as the primary risk factor for contracting tuberculosis, one must admit that the residents of an assisted facility are also under a significant threat of developing TB. Since the members of an assisted living residence need the guidance of a supervisor to maintain good health, they are exposed to a considerable amount of risk due to the lack of personal understanding of the danger. Therefore, regular screening is essential for the target denizens of the population.
Notifying a Government Agency
To make sure that the TB issue should not spread across the community and that the rest of the citizens should not contract the disease, the nurse must notify the local agencies immediately. To be more exact, the public health agencies at the local level must be informed on the threat to the public health. For instance, the local Board of Health will have to be informed on the issue (CDC, 2014).
Crucial Nursing Actions
After identifying the patients who have been infected with a TB virus, the nurse must immediately make sure that the patient is isolated from the rest of the facility residents; thus, the epidemics can be prevented. Moreover, it will be necessary to find the people whom the patient has been contacting with and run TB checks on them to make sure that they have not contracted the disease. The setting that has caused the problem to develop must also be identified and altered so that the rest of the facility residents could avoid the threat (Carlsson et al., 2014). Once the steps above are taken, the nurse must establish trustful relationships with the patient and design the treatment process that will help the patient recover.
Interventions for TB-Negative Outcomes
Apart from changing the environment, in which the people in the risk group live, the nurse must also carry out a program aimed at raising awareness regarding TB. The residents of the assisted living center must be provided with the information concerning the nurses to contact and the pieces of advice on preventing TB. In other words, a nurse must carry out a series of individual and group conversations with the rest of the facility residents so that they could understand the gravity of the issue. Finally, a nurse must talk to the staff of the institution and make sure that regular TB screening could take place.
Reference List
Carlsson, M., Johansson, S., Eale, R.-P. B., & Kaboru, B. B. (2014). Nurses’ roles and experiences with enhancing adherence to tuberculosis treatment among patients in Burundi: A qualitative study. Tuberculosis Research and Treatment, 984218(2014), 1–9.
CDC. (2014). Managing tuberculosis patients and improving adherence. Atlanta, GA: Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Gale, S. A., & Beal, J. A. (2013). Building academic-practice partnerships: Sharing best practices. Nurse Leader, 11(4), 1–72.
Talsma, A. N., Jones, K., Guo, Y., Wilson, D., & Campbell, D. (2014). The relationship between nurse staffing and failure to rescue: Where does it matter most? Journal of Patient Safety, 10(3), 133–139. Web.