Nursing Staffing Levels’ Impact on Patient Outcomes

Topic: Nursing Words: 1225 Pages: 4

Table of Contents

Introduction
Ethical Considerations of the Research
Conclusion
Reference

Introduction

Nurses serving in health care facilities are obliged the provision treatment and care services for several patients admitted and those who seek outpatient services. However, due to the greatest acuity level, the number of nurses performing such services has substantially decreased across the US (Tawfik et al., 2020). When a nurse practitioner reports that he or she is not feeling well or goes on a leave, it is certain that the chief nursing officer will be left with no option apart from allocating a care giver to every patient. Therefore, the role of the chief nursing officer involves allocation of each patient a caregiver and gets compelled to double them up with the patients they have been allocated to care for other patients. Few patients keep caregivers occupied in care facilities, so patient treatment attempts get greater focus.

With such occurrences, nurses offering care services to patients have been affected in one way or another owing to the pressures and increased workloads that have caused burnout among other health concerns. In addition, the intense workloads have subjected care providers to dangers such as back pains among other injuries due to unfavorable working environments, long working hours, and improper body mechanics (Fagerström et al., 2018). To lessen nurse stress while coworkers are sick or on leave, nurse-patient ratio must be addressed. Ensuring adequate nursing staffing reduces mortality, prevents infections, and improves patient and nurse satisfaction. The evaluation is going to address the issue of understaffing in nurses working in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). It will focus on how understaffing can be addressed, and demonstrate how aspects such as increased nursing errors can be eliminated using the PICOT question.

PICOT Question: Does having enough nurses on staff in the ICU (I) in comparison to not having enough nurses on staff (C) (O) decrease medical errors and infections among patients and stress and disorders among nurses (O) within a year (T)?

Population(P)- patients in ICU.
Intervention(I)- enough staff nurses
Comparison(C)- not having enough nurses on staff
Outcome (O)- decrease medical errors and infections among patients and stress and disorders among nurses
Time(T)- within a year.

The assessment study will dwell on the issue of a reduced nurse staff in the ICU, which has increased the number of medical errors. This leads to increased dangers among patients, which translates to escalated cases of preventable mortalities due to delays, stress, disorders, and infections. The study will also be guided by two articles, seeking their stands on the problem, and how they address it while exhausting their relationship with the PICOT question.

Criteria	Article 1.	Article 2.
APA-Formatted Article Citation with Permalink	Nogueira, T. D. A., Menegueti, M. G., Perdoná, G. D. S. C., Auxiliadora-Martins, M., Fugulin, F. M. T., & Laus, A. M. (2017). Effect of nursing care hours on the outcomes of Intensive Care assistance. PloS one, 12(11), e0188241	Tawfik, D. S., Profit, J., Lake, E. T., Liu, J. B., Sanders, L. M., & Phibbs, C. S. (2020). Development and use of an adjusted nurse staffing metric in the neonatal intensive care unit. Health services research, 55(2), 190-200. Web.
How Does the Article Relate to the PICOT Question?	The article relates to the PICOT question by deducing the exact implication of the number of nursing hours on patient outcomes, hence, advising on intensive adjustment for nurse staffing.	This article relates to the PICOT question by highlighting the implication of a low number of care providers among patients seeking physical activity services in line with the existing sociodemographic aspects causing depressive symptoms among patients in the United States.
Quantitative, Qualitative (How do you know?)	The study was quantitative since it depended on numerical data.	The study is Qualitative in nature since it demonstrates the ordinality of depression categories among people in the United States in relation to the endogeneity of physical activity.
Purpose Statement	The purpose statement of the study is to determine the impact of nursing staff and working hours on patient outcomes.	The purpose statement of the study is to develop a model for determining future nurse staffing needs and assess the implication of unforeseen staffing breaches on patient outcomes.
Research Question	Do the patient hours provided by nurses match the expected hours for every patient?	What is the implication of nursing staffing on higher patient needs, and the determination of the expected patient outcomes among vulnerable groups?
Outcome	Patient outcomes are significantly affected by the number of nursing care hours dedicated to them.	The study found that the nurse staffing prediction model showed reduced rates of HAI in the NICU. This suggests that patients whose nurse staffing levels were higher than expected showed positive deviation from the actual conditions.
Setting (Where did the study take place?)	The study was conducted in a medium-sized Intensive Care Unit at a private health facility in Sao Paulo, Brazil hospital, which is known for assisting patients among other health planners.	The study was commenced in NICU at The California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) facility.
Sample	The sample was collected from the electronic record system and the nursing staff’s daily schedule between 2011 and 2013.	The study involved 100 NICUs and 12000 infants as the primary participants.
Method	The study utilized descriptive, transverse, and quantitative data collected electronically aimed at determining the workload from the facility from the nurses to the patients.	The study utilized a repeated-measures observational study where nurse staffing prediction was established through machine learning and hierarchical linear regression. This is where the association between nurse staffing and other healthcare-associated infections, mortality, and length of stay could be determined.
Key Findings of the Study	The study, from the critical analysis of the nursing care determiners and the hour’s ratio, found that there is a significant correlation between phlebitis and ventilator-associated pneumonia. This suggests that the high the hour ratio, the lower the rate of incidences of phlebitis and ventilator-associated pneumonia.	From an 11-factor prediction model, it is evident that 35% of nurse staffing variation among the NICUs proved that higher-than-predicated nurse staffing was linked with decreased risk-adjusted peculiar of healthcare-associated infection. If extremities are reported on the gaps between patient outcomes and nursing staffing levels, there is more need to intensify the actual patient-nurse ratio to eradicate the potency of such discrepancy, hence, improving patient outcomes.

Ethical Considerations of the Research

Research ethics are a set of guidelines that should be taken into consideration when planning and carrying out experiments. Voluntary participation, informed consent, anonymity, confidentiality, risk of harm, and dissemination of findings are all part of these guiding principles (Nogueira et al., 2017). Like any other ordinary research, it is certain that the study was highly considerate of ethical elements, which have been guiding all the designs and practices. Therefore, the two studies were conducted after seeking the informed consent of the participants as well as having voluntary participation from the subjects rather than forcing them to participate.

Conclusion

In summary, extremities reported on the gaps between patient outcomes and nursing staffing levels have increased risks and dangers for patients seeking intensive care services. Therefore, there is more need to intensify the actual patient-nurse ratio to eradicate the potency of such discrepancy, hence, improving patient outcomes. In addition, it is certain that anytime recruitment of nurses is sought, consideration of the number of hours of care required by patients should be prioritized.

Reference

Fagerström, L., Kinnunen, M., & Saarela, J. (2018). Nursing workload, patient safety incidents and mortality: an observational study from Finland. BMJ Open, 8(4), e016367. Web.