Healthcare Stressors
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Institution Affiliation
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Healthcare Stressors
Introduction
Healthcare systems and professionals face many stressors that are affecting the quality of healthcare delivery. The current stressor that healthcare settings are facing is a shortage of nurses and healthcare workers. According to the World Health Organization, modern healthcare is rife with a lack of care providers. In the United States, nurses are members of the most extensive health care, with about a 3.1million nurses working in different health care fraternities. The nursing shortage is estimated to get to 12.9million by 2035, according to the third Global Forum on Human Resources for Health’. The nursing shortage has directly and indirectly affected work and healthcare provision in the healthcare facility I work in (Marc, Bartosiewicz, Burzynska, Chmiel, & Januszewicz, 2018, p. 10).
The shortage of nurses and care providers compromises the quality of health care provision. An example is in a case where a PICU nurse handling four patients may not be able to attend to all of them at the same time. The nurse is not able to provide mouth care for ventilator-related cases in the prevention of pneumonia. Also, the nurse may not be able to prevent pressure ulcers since he/she cannot turn all four patients at a go after every two hours. When the patient load exceeds the available care providers, this affects the patient experience. The nursing shortage has also led to increased hospital-acquired infections and low staff retention production.
My healthcare working setting tried to deal with this stressor by hiring around ten more nurses into the unit, but still, there was a need for hiring more nurses. The fraternity’s administration department has posted and advertised the open positions in healthcare, but still, there are no applicants, and when some apply, they are not qualified for the job.
References
Marc, M., Bartosiewicz, A., Burzynska, J., Chmiel, Z., & Januszewicz, P. (2018, July 24). A
nursing shortage – a prospect of global and local policies. International Nursing Review, 66(1), 9-16. http://dx.doi.org/http://dx.doi.org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1111/inr.12473
Question
Write a 1pg description of the national healthcare issue/stressor you selected for analysis, and explain how the healthcare issue/stressor may impact your work setting. Then, describe how your health system work setting has responded to the healthcare issue/stressor, including a description of what changes may have been implemented. Be specific and provide examples.