Competing Needs and Policies
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Competing Needs and Policies
Identify and describe at least two competing needs impacting your selected healthcare issue/stressor
The healthcare stressor identified is the shortage of nurses and physicians in the US healthcare centers. The deficit is attributed to the aging baby boomers population and the retiring APRNs and physicians. The need is also projected to intensify due to escalating demand in the newly constructed healthcare facilities in rural and underserved areas. As a result of the workforce shortage, work overloads are common. The practice causes healthcare workers burnout, low morale, and at times high turnover rates. Nurses have also committed fatal errors in their line of duty due to heavy workloads and pressure to attend to more patients than they can handle.
The competing needs resulting from this instance are cost and quality. Whereas the facility aims at achieving more with limited resources, the nurses and physicians are overloaded, which affects the quality and effectiveness of the services delivered. Having fewer health workers is cost-effective to the healthcare facility, but a crowded workforce is ineffective and likely to alter its quality. For instance, a nurse who has to attend, assess and prescribe drugs to 15patients in a over 12 hours shift is expected to commit errors compared to a nurse who has to treat five patients within a 12 hours shift and has a lunch and a tea break. From the same instance, the organization with a single physician offering consultation services is likely to save on operational costs.
Frequently, healthcare administrators are faced with ethical dilemmas linked to competing needs and finite resources. Notably, concentration on one condition compromises the other. In the context above, concentration on saving cost eventually compromises the quality of services hence dissatisfied customers. Whenever customers are discontented, their retention is also impacted and will likely affect potential customers by spreading the poor service delivery experiences.
Describe a relevant policy or practice in your organization that may influence your selected healthcare issue/stressor
Like in many organizations, healthcare in my organization has transformed from a care-oriented outcome to a business-oriented model that emphasizes income other than quality. The organizational needs of saving on cost come at the price of compromised quality. The workforce, therefore, fails to match the patient’s needs. Out-turn, patients have complained about the delay in assessment, drug administration, and response to general concerns. Several studies have also outlined the awful outcome of the business-model in a healthcare setting; the organization has been adamant about the unsafe practice.
Another practice is assigning large ratios to the caregivers. Nurses are expected to handle more patients’ needs and care for them; thus, the nurses are overworked, which affects the quality of services delivered. Again the nurses are expected to deal with documentation of patients’ conditions and monitoring results. The workload is overwhelming to the healthcare workers.
The organization has also been overworking physicians with large numbers of patients seeking consultations. Due to this, patients have been waiting for long periods for consultation services. In some cases, patients with conditions requiring immediate consultation have been forced to pay high consultation charges.
Critique the policy for ethical considerations, and explain the policy’s strengths and challenges in promoting ethics.
Adopting the business model policy in healthcare harms patients and the healthcare workforce, and the organization in the long-run. The model may seem beneficial in the short-term speculations since it saves on cost, providing healthcare services with limited resources. For instance, having ten nurses in place of fifteen nurses may seem profitable to the organization. The profit, however, is short-lived.
The weaknesses of adopting a business model in a hospital setting are extensive. First, nurses and physicians have to handle significant patient ratios and work longer hours than their regular shifts. Work overloads reduce morale, increase burnout, increase nursing errors, cause poor patient outcomes, increase healthcare costs, and compromise the quality of services delivered. In several cases, nurses have administered the wrong dosage or the wrong medication to patients due to work pressure. In other instances, nurses forgot to administer drugs to a patient in critical conditions, which led to deteriorations of health and even death. Such events lead to criminal charges and even loss of jobs, which may demoralize healthcare professionals.
To the patients, the impact is also experienced. Since the healthcare workers are dealing with many patients, the bond and interaction are minimal. Again, patients have been overcrowded in emergency rooms since the cases overwhelm the available nurses. To the patients seeking consultations, a longer waiting time is experienced. The shortage reduces the speed and increases the cost of medicare care services.
Furthermore, physicians require a certain number of nurses to manage patients; with the shortage effectively, there is physician dissatisfaction. Again, the organization has reported closure of some departments hence reduced patient capacity within the facility. The patients within the facility have therefore reported decreased satisfaction in the services delivered.
The reputation of the organization with demoralized workforce and unsatisfied customers is likely to deteriorate. Subsequently, the organization will suffer high employee turnover rates, decreased customers, and hence low incomes. Adoption of business-model in the health organization is therefore disadvantageous in the log-run.
Recommend one or more policy or practice changes designed to balance the competing needs of resources, workers, and patients, while addressing any ethical shortcomings of the existing policies. Be specific and provide examples
Adoption of a patient-oriented model other than a business model would be beneficial to the organization. The organization can also adopt new core values, mission, and vision to provide quality health services. The practice will enable the healthcare to focus on patients’ well-being, hence improving the nurses’ working conditions. Also, the new policy will ensure that the organization employs enough workforce to provide quality care (Barros et al., 2015). The practice will increase the patients’ satisfaction hence the retention of customers. Better working conditions will also reduce turnover rates and therefore improve the quality of the services delivered.
Secondly, the organization needs to adopt safe nurse-patient ratios. Safe ratios are necessary to reduce nurse work pressure and increase nurse-patient contact (Haddad et al., 2020). The proportions have also been influential in retaining nurses and satisfying patient needs. States such as California have executed laws to standardize safe patient-nurse ratios.
Thirdly, the policy that the organization may adopt is the transformation of the work process. In many cases, nurses use a lot of time fetching drugs and documenting patients’ information (Barros et al., 2015). Centralization of patients’ medicines and health records in their rooms could increase the nurse-patient interaction hence proper assessment and patient health monitoring. The errors in drug administration are also reduced at high rates. Transforming Care at the Bedside is a health project adopted by most hospitals. The project aims at maintaining close contact between the nurse and the patient.
In the physician shortage case, innovative care and technology can assist in solving the crisis. The technology is vital in transforming physicians’ roles to skill base; hence physicians can share knowledge and attend to patients remotely. Also, the organization can employ foreign nurses to cub the shortage. An instance of technology that addresses physician shortage is Telemedicine technology which has helped attend rare health conditions remotely.
The above policies will achieve equilibrium in caregivers’ needs of working in friendly and pressure-free environments and achieving quality health care as per organizational goals. Retaining a motivated workforce enhances the retention of workers and customers, which is profitable in the long-run. Consequently, the organization will achieve the provision of high-quality services at will, saving overall costs.
References
Barros, P., Brouwer, W. B. F., Thomson, S., & Varkevisser, M. (October 14, 2015). Competition among health care providers: helpful or harmful? The European Journal of Health Economics, 17: 229-233. doi:10.1007/s10198-015-0736-3
Haddad, L. M., Annamaraju, P., & Toney-Butler, T. J. (2020, December 14). Nursing shortage – StatPearls – NCBI bookshelf. National Center for Biotechnology Information. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493175/
Question
Identify and describe at least two competing needs impacting your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
Describe a relevant policy or practice in your organization that may influence your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
Critique the policy for ethical considerations, and explain the policy’s strengths and challenges in promoting ethics.
Recommend one or more policy or practice changes designed to balance the competing needs of resources, workers, and patients, while addressing any ethical shortcomings of the existing policies. Be specific and provide examples.
Cite evidence that informs the healthcare issue/stressor and/or the policies, and provide two scholarly resources in support of your policy or practice recommendations.