Problem
Over the past few years, there has been an increase in demand for nursing and healthcare services due to an increase in the aging population. It is therefore important to understand the stress the health care providers are going through, and its effect on service delivery. The increased workload among healthcare providers has led to the increased need to analyze the characteristics of the professionals, including the quality of care provided. Various studies have shown that the increased workload leads to increase pressure on them which negatively affects their output or quality of services provided to their patients. The high population of the aging population means that there is an increased demand for health care services. This calls for health care institutions to hire more caregivers to attend to the patients in order to improve the quality of services provided (Duffield, King, & Aisbett, 2011) . Consequently, the general population in the United States is increasing at a decreasing rate, which means that there are less people who want to be nurses. This pressure for the healthcare industry is increasing as time goes by, and so it is important to collect information to understand nurses’ perceptions.
During their training, health care professionals are taught how to work under pressure. It is therefore not certain that the professionals can handle the pressure that results from the increase in workload. It is known that when human beings work under pressure, they often achieve low-quality results. Therefore, when healthcare professionals are forced to attend to a large number of patients, work extra hours, it means that they are working under immense pressure. Understanding the human factors associated with the nursing workload is significant, rather than focusing on the simple factors like skill competency, and task performance. Many studies have focused on this matter, but no study has focused on the nurses' perspective.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Currently, nurses are suffering from stress which is a result of increased workload. This occupational stress is associated with increased hazardous and reduced efficiency within the healthcare industry. The stress has also been associated with absenteeism among the nurses. Providing the nurses with a large workload negatively affects both their private life, and the quality of services provided by them while at work (Humphries & McGee, 2014) . Therefore, this problem is concerned with the understanding of the perception of nurses and other healthcare professionals towards increased workload and its effect on service quality. A proper understanding of this aspect will be significant for developing suggestions and recommendations that will help in eliminating the problem.
Due to the increasing workload, the nurses lack sufficient time to tackle various tasks, which directly the quality of services provided to their patients. It has also negatively affected their decisions concerning the performance of various activities. The increased workload has affected their motivation which is associated with increased absenteeism and turnover. Finally, the increased workload leads to stress and violation of rules in the workplace, which affects the patients' security.
Possible solutions to the problem
The first possible solution to the problem is the use of electronic systems in setting assignments, staffing, and scheduling. The electronic systems will help reduce the heavy workload and stress among the nurses and other healthcare professionals, thus improving the service quality. The other possible solution is the introduction of measures o regulate the number of patients that nurses should attend to each day. The fewer number of patients that a nurse attends to help in improving restorative thinking, which leads to improved service quality as it improves communication between the nurse and their patients.
References
Duffield, C. D.-P., King, M., & Aisbett, K. (2011). Nursing staffing, nursing workload, the work environment and patient outcomes. Applied nursing research, 24(4), 244-255.
Humphries, N. M., & McGee, H. (2014). Quality of care and health professional burnout: narrative literature review. International journal of health care quality assurance.
