6053 Week One Responses

Previous order 223137 Respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days who chose a different national healthcare issue/stressor than you selected. Explain how their chosen national healthcare issue/stressor may also impact your work setting and what (if anything) is being done to address the national healthcare issue/stressor.

Response 2: Laken

The discussion post acknowledges that there are a range of health care stressors, to include cost, patient experience, accessible points of care, healthcare policy, and privacy. The author goes on to identify accessible points of care as being of great concern and requiring much attention. 6053 Week One Responses .The post explains that technological advances can be leveraged to offer telehealth that would make health care more accessible, as well as increase practice revenues, reduce costs for patients, reduce practice overhead, and improve health care quality. In addition, the post highlights the new reality of Covid-19 that calls for social distancing and how leveraging communication technologies can improve health care access by linking patients to medical personnel without necessarily having physical contact. Generally, the position that virtual environments can play to improve health care access has been well highlighted in the post with the value highlighted, especially in the face of Covid-19 that insists on physical distance as a health management measure. Still, there is a shortcoming in the post, especially with regards to addressing the needs of patients without communication capabilities to support telehealth. For instance, the post could discuss how wearable technologies can collect health information that would then be transmitted to electronic health records (EHR) systems and analyzed using algorithms capable of pointing out health care needs, such as identifying changing blood pressure (Saba & McCormick, 2015). Also, the post could explain how the internet can be leveraged to educate patients and family members on how to address routine health care needs so as to reduce the pressure on patients (Black, 2020). Overall, the post has been well presented to address accessible points of care as a health care stressor.

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References

Black, B. (2020). Professional Nursing: Concepts & Challenges (9^th ed.). Elsevier.

Saba, V., & McCormick, K. (2015). Essentials of nursing informatics (6^th ed.). McGraw-Hill.

Response 1: Olubunmi

The discussion post focuses on a national health care stressor. The author identifies nurse shortage as a national health care stressor, noting that the realities of resource limitations have occasioned the present state of affairs. The post explains that the health care environment is characterized by shortage of nursing staff, battle fatigue among nurses, and high medical costs. The state of affairs has negatively impacted medical stakeholders to include medical personnel and patients. The stressor is of concern because medical personnel have the primary objective of providing high quality care, however the stressor limits the ability to achieve this objective. The author goes on to explain that the stressor (nurse shortage) compromises the quality of care as nurses are forced to spend less time with each patients causing them to overlook some care needs that develop into serious problems.  6053 Week One Responses .The post particularly stresses on how the stressor impacts patient safety. In addition, the author explains how the health system has responded to the stressor, explaining that new nurses are hired and travel nurses contracted to address the shortages. Also, it explains that nurses are permitted to cap the number of patients they handle in order to avoid fatigue that has implications for patient safety and care outcomes. The suggestions made point to staffing flexibility as a strategy for addressing the changing needs. Although the article is informative about the issue of nurse short staffing as a health care stressor and how it can be addressed, there is a need to better explain its impact on national health care with examples. For instance, explaining that spending less time with patients creates opportunities for falls and pressure ulcers that cause harm to the patient (Ellis & Bach, 2015). Yet another suggestion would be to base nursing assignments on patient acuity (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2018). Overall, the post presents an informative analysis of nurse staffing shortage as a health care stressor.

References

Ellis, P., & Bach, S. (2015). Leadership, Management and Team Working in Nursing (2^nd ed.). SAGE Publications.

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. (2018). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4^th ed.). Jones and Bartlett Learning.

Olubunmi O.

RE: Discussion – Week 1

Top of Form

National healthcare stressor

Healthcare workers face complexities and ever-changing policies in the healthcare industry. The changes affect both healthcare providers and patients. Complexities in healthcare include high medical cost, a tremendous shortage of nursing staff,  and battle fatigue among nurses,  all leading to reduce public trust in healthcare providers.  The combinations of all the turmoil are identified as factors that drew nurses into the crisis ( Marshall and Broome, 2017). These complexities of healthcare induce issues/stressors, as a result, negatively impact healthcare workers. In the video, Laureate Education (2018), healthcare leaders aim high to achieve a high quality of care in the most maximum way. Adapting to new changes needs the collaboration and coevolution of healthcare workers to bring the change to a meaningful, dynamic equilibrium outcome  ( Marshall and Broome, 2017). Current and past events stimulate changes in a healthcare organization. Take, for example, a change in policy on nurse -to -patient ratio can cause issues, stress, and increase anxiety for nurses. 6053 Week One Responses .

Impact on National healthcare

One of the major stressors for nurses is caring for more patients at a time. Healthcare organizations and facilities set a standard based on unit census and acuity in a particular specialty area. Presently, some states have intervened and passed laws to help enforce and standardize safe staffing. Some states have put in place safe staffing law guidelines to assist healthcare organizations. The guidelines are not a mandate by law but rather serve as a template to use subsequently to manage the p nurse to ratio.  According to the nursing center, California passes a law for one nurse for every five patients on average in medical-surgical units (nursingcenter.com 2019). Patient safety should not be a compromise because of overwhelmed nurses. As a professional healthcare provider, our patient expects basic essential, safety, when they seek medical help. As a healthcare provider, the ultimate goal is to prevent and minimize risk and harm from reaching the patient. ( Marshall and Broome, 2017).

Health system response to nurse to patient ratio

The organization that we work for has recognized the critical and significant patient safety and quality of care. The higher the patient -to nurse ratio, the lower the quality of patient care. Our organization is paving ways to provide adequate staff, leading to a decrease in nurses’ workload. Here are some of the many ways the organization responds to the nurses to patient ration. Firstly, hiring of a new registered nurse to all nursing specialty. Secondly, bringing in travel nurses to assist with staffing shortages and lastly, the nursing administrative staff incentivized nurses to work extra shifts by giving bonuses.

Crisis Emergency Department

In our department, the psychiatric emergency unit, the nurse to ratio depends significantly on the patients’ acuity. The capacity of the unit is ten patients with two nurses. However, the organization allows nurses to cap the number of patients in the unit for safety purposes. Once the staff deemed that additional patients in the unit can harm other patients and or staff. 6053 Week One Responses .For example, if there were two patients in the unit, one of the patients is psychotic and paranoid. The other patient is manic, verbally hostile, and tends to be physically aggressive towards staff and another patient. At this point, and after consulting with the manager, the nurses, as a team, make a consensus decision not to take additional patients until the staff deemed the unit is safe for another patient. The nurse to patient ratio flexibility due to safety issues helps nursing staff in the psychiatric emergency unit make it a safe environment for both patients and staff.

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References
Laureate Education (Producer). (2018). Leading in healthcare organizations of the future (Video file). Baltimore, MD: Author

Marshall, E., & Broome, M. (2017). Transformational leadership in nursing: From expert clinician to influential leader (2^nd ed.). Springer

https://www.nursingcenter.com/ncblog/december-2019/nurse-patient-ratio

Laken S.

RE: Discussion – Week 1

Top of Form

There are many national healthcare issues that impact nurses and their work setting. The healthcare issues are a wide range some that are fairly new and some that have been around for decades.  According to Managed Healthcare Executives (2019), a few of the issues are cost, patient experience, accessible points of care, healthcare policy, and privacy.

One of the national healthcare issues that deserves extra attention is accessible points of care. Managed Healthcare Executives (2019) explains that this includes telehealth, and digital devices moving care closer to home and office for patients. Increasing accessibility of care has benefits not only for patients but doctors as well. Greiwe (2018) listed some of the benefits of telehealth and they were: expands access of care and reaches more patients, increases practice revenue, cuts cost for patients, reduces practice overhead, and improves healthcare quality. 6053 Week One Responses .

During the worldwide pandemic of Covid accessibility of care is an issue that healthcare facilities have been working with and around as far as finding alternatives to patients coming in to a actual facility for appointments. Many healthcare locations have moved appointments that can be done virtually to telehealth scenarios.  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2020) explained that health care providers are encouraged to use telehealth to provide car for patients in situations such as routine healthcare or wellness visits. Using telehealth allows healthy patients to stay in the safety of their home while still having access to their providers for check ins that can be done virtually via two-way communication devices.

Reference

Managed Healthcare Executives. (2019). The Biggest Issues Facing Healthcare Today. https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/view/biggest-issues-facing-healthcare-today

Michael Greiwe. (2018). Top 10 Benefits of Telehealth for Patients and Doctors. https://www.ortholive.com/blog/top-10-benefits-of-telehealth-for-patients-and-doctors

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2020). Telehealth: Delivering Care Safely During COVID-19. https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/telehealth/index.html . 6053 Week One Responses.