Description of the National Healthcare Issue
The healthcare system suffers from a shortage of nurses. As a result, the few nurses are forced to service the high workload that is characteristic of the healthcare sector. A shrinking nurse workforce, along with the aging patient and nursing population, has caused a mismatch between the hospital demand and the existing nursing staff, and resultantly forcing these nurses to experience long working hours with some working more than one job (Amin, 2011). The low budget allocation for hiring staff, despite the consensus of the importance of adequate staffing in safe care practice, has resulted in the low staffing ratios, which can negatively impact on the quality of services offered by these nurses.
The Impact of Nurses’ High Workload on their Working Environment
Study evidence shows a connection between the nurse workload and patient safety in healthcare institutions. Factors such as the long working hours, working more than one job, low staffing ration, minimal social support, and the varying workload are some of the aspects that are resultant of high workload on nurses which have an adverse effect on the quality of care offered by nurses (Amin, 2011; Magalhães et al., 2017 ). When nurses experience high workload, their level of vigilance tend to get impaired, and thus leading to a higher risk of events, such as medication administration errors, falls, UTI, and central catheter infection, among others ( Magalhães et al., 2017 ). In general, the high nursing workload is a crucial stressor linked to various deleterious psychological reactions, such as burnout, which might affect nurses’ productivity.
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Responses to Address the High Workload for Nurses
The human factor engineering approach, which relies on the SIEPS model of work system, can be applied to address the issue of high workload on nurses and patient safety. The approach, which is based on the work system design, looks into the factors contributing to the nursing workload to effectively understand how nurses’ working system lead to a heavy workload (Carayon et al., 2008). Upon the identification of elements and characteristics of the work system and how they lead to a heavy workload, the human factor engineers can redesign the nurses’ work system to eradicate the workload.
References
Amin, S. G. (2011). A study to determine the influence of workload on nursing personnel.
Carayon, P., & Gurses, A. P. (2008). Nursing workload and patient safety—a human factors engineering perspective. In Patient safety and quality: An evidence-based handbook for nurses . Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US).
Magalhães, A. M. M. D., Costa, D. G. D., Riboldi, C. D. O., Mergen, T., Barbosa, A. D. S., & Moura, G. M. S. S. D. (2017). Association between workload of the nursing staff and patient safety outcomes. Revista da Escola de Enfermagem da USP , 51 .
