The Issue of Regulating the Nurse-Patient Staffing Ratio

Introduction

MedSurg Matters is the authorized associate newssheet of the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses (sometimes referred to as AMSN). It comprehends peer-reviewed medical courses along with the updates that apply to the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses participation and is released six times annually as an advantage of affiliation. It is an adjudicated periodical that delivers the clinicians with the multidisciplinary material they require to make available evidence-founded, medically exceptional persistent care and improve their nursing training. MedSurg Matters owns its website with comprehensive material about the periodical, contributions, and reissues, along with the publications of the present issue accessible in the complete text copy for downloading. Printed six times annually, MedSurg Matters suggests from two to five Certification for Nurse Educators courses per matter. The Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurse’s associates can receive the related exchange hours without charge in the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses Online Library. MedSurg Matters is indexed with numerous article distribution facilities, such as Ovid, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and PubMed.

Regulating patient staffing is a compound subject in nursing that needs to be approached; however, it has been noted on the reintroduced position in recent times because of the patients being better educated, advanced insight ranks, financial issues that are subsequent in reductions at any stage of health care, and the maturity of the nursing personnel. At present, there are four lawmaking suggestions in the House of the United States and Senate regarding staffing, with numerous states discussing this subject matter as well. The examination into augmented staffing levels is diverse. While upsurges in staffing rise an occupation fulfillment within nurses, the studies are unsuccessful in demonstrating a reduction in either patient drops or the expansion of compression abscesses. There has been a dynamic discussion at all stages of health care around finding the suitable method to accomplish the patient consignment that registered nurses are able and are expected to undertake. Nurses are devoted to the protection of their customers, functioning assiduously towards optimistic patient consequences. To be successful, patient-staff percentages have to be evenhanded.

Numerous staffing representations and terms obscure this concern as well. The purpose of the project is to represent the projected regulation, perceive the advantages and disadvantages of staffing regulation, assess various staffing prototypes, and debate the insinuations for training.

Research Questions

There are several research questions towards regulating patient staffing that will help to conduct the project.

  1. What are the issues that are related to adjusting the nurse-patient staffing percentages?
  2. What is the essence of the existing regulations for adjusting the nurse-patient staffing percentages?
  3. How the methods of the nurse-patient staffing percentages could be approached?
  4. What are the insinuations for nursing practice?

Hypothesis

Healthcare frontrunners aim to guarantee that care is distributed, and it will encounter the requirements of the patients while fortifying an income for the infirmary. Hospital superintendents have to be convinced that the sustained fiscal feasibility of the organization, satisfactory staffing, and optimistic patient results will sustain with refining technological improvements. The diverse programs and the incapability of nurses, hospital superintendents, and fiscal specialists to interconnect toward a solitary resolution, along with the difficulty of responding to the staffing requirements, have relocated the subject into the party-political area (Douglas, 2010). Representatives of the state and nationwide stage are struggling to move the subject matter towards its resolution. For example, California applied state-authorized nurse-patient staffing stages more than ten years ago. Twenty-three other states (counting Illinois, Maine, Nevada, Ohio, and Oregon) are currently bearing in mind or have approved staffing regulations to apply authorized staffing quotients, implement insight stages to regulate staffing requirements, or advance employment commissions with staff nurses as associates (Douglas, 2010).

Methodology

The project will be implemented by the qualitative method. Qualitative research is founded mainly on the exploratory investigation.

It is implemented to achieve a comprehension of fundamental explanations, attitudes, and motives. It delivers perceptions into the issue or assists in developing the concepts or premises for further quantitative exploration. Moreover, this type of research is also applied to expose tendencies in judgments and estimations and plunge further into the issue. The research questions that were mentioned above have depicted the steps of implementing my project.

Results

There are fiscal issues to contemplate while forming an agreed nurse-to-patient staffing percentage. Hospitals are compensated a permanent amount under the Diagnosis-related Group system, which does not reproduce the eminence of care that was given to the patient. Besides, there are a certain amount of hospital assimilated circumstances that are not protected by Medicare and many confidentially established insurance assemblies (Department of Health and Human Services, 2010). Adjusting staffing percentages would distribute an increased fiscal affliction on the medical institution. To encounter this upsurge in price, the medical institutions may contemplate decreasing support staff ranks, which may escalate the general encumbrance on the registered nurses (Spetz, 2005). In a research conducted by Aiken and colleagues (2010), “there was a substantial decrease in the use of unlicensed assistive personnel (34%) and non-nursing support services such as clerical help and housekeeping services (27%) when staffing ratios were regulated” (p. 908).

The discussion over nurse-patient staffing quotients is compound and announcing the officials into the combination upsurges its complication. The key subject remains in the distribution of harmless, superior, and price-efficient patient care. This goal can merely be achieved when the nursing workers, supervisors, economic frontrunners, and political figures start to work organized and esteem the points of view of each other to retrieve a solution to this compound issue. The nursing workers must participate actively in being knowledgeable and contribute to the emergence of a nurse-patient organization to regulate a staffing percentage that endorses patient protection and optimistic results of the treatment of every patient.

Conclusion

My hypothetical project will affect not only the nursing career in general but the issue of regulating the nurse-patient staffing ratio in particular. With the help of this research, several important questions will be answered, the existing regulations for adjusting the nurse-patient staffing percentages will be observed, and, as a result, the alleged solutions to the problem will be evaluated. The usage of a consistent staffing approach, however, fails to generate precise outcomes. For example, the Medicare’s Case Mix Index is usually applied to create assessments of superiority in the medical facilities (Mark & Harless, 2011). The complete outcome is frequently reliant on the viewpoint of the observant. “Administrators tend to view a higher CMI as a reflection that the patients require more resources, resulting in higher costs” (Mark & Harless, 2011, p. 107).

References

Aiken, L., Sloane, D., Cimiotti, J., Clarke, S., Flynn, L., Seago, J. A., & Smith, H. (2010). Implications of the California nurse staffing mandate for other states. Health Services Research, 45(4), 904-921.

Department of Health and Human Services. (2010). Hospital acquired conditions (HAC) in acute inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS) hospitals. Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services. Web.

Douglas, K. (2010). Ratios – If only it were that easy. Nursing Economics, 28(2), 119-125.

Mark, B. A., & Harless, D. W. (2011). Adjusting for patient acuity in measurement of nurse staffing: Two approaches. Nursing Research, 60(2), 107-114.

Spetz, J. (2005). Public policy and nurse staffing: What approach is best? Journal of Nursing Administration, 35(1), 14-16.

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StudyCorgi. "The Issue of Regulating the Nurse-Patient Staffing Ratio." April 27, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/the-issue-of-regulating-the-nurse-patient-staffing-ratio/.

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StudyCorgi. 2022. "The Issue of Regulating the Nurse-Patient Staffing Ratio." April 27, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/the-issue-of-regulating-the-nurse-patient-staffing-ratio/.

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