Competing Needs Impact on Policy Development.

Competing Needs Impact on Policy Development

Healthcare systems are obligated to provide safe and quality care as they fulfill patients’ and workforces’ needs to improve their experiences. Competing needs present in healthcare systems are the needs of the workforce, resources, and patients.Competing Needs Impact on Policy Development. These needs should always align with a specific policy’s agenda since they impact the policy’s development. For instance, a policy could advocate for employment and retention of the nursing workforce to address inadequate nurse staffing. This policy needs to satisfy workforce and patient needs while ascertaining that resources are effectively used, or financial cost is low. Research suggests that appropriate utilization and deployment of the healthcare workforce are significant for delivering healthcare services in relation to quality, quantity, and cost (Figueroa et al., 2019).Competing Needs Impact on Policy Development.

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            Failure to effectively utilize and deploy the healthcare workforce has consequences. They might contribute to an oversupply or shortage of clinical staff. An oversupply of clinical or nursing staff often leads to the delivery of quality and quantity services as the staff does not experience burnout and fatigue. However, this might result in economic inefficiencies and misallocation of resources. On the other hand, staff shortage is associated with negative impacts, such as decreased quantity and quality of care due to minimized resources that can be utilized to offer essential services. Also, shortages lead to higher mortality and mobility rates, readmissions, delays, and increased medical errors (Rosenberg, 2019). In healthcare facilities with high patient-to-healthcare staff ratios, the staff experiences dissatisfaction and burnout, ultimately compromising patient safety.Competing Needs Impact on Policy Development.

Specific Competing Needs Impacting Workload

Specific competing needs that impact workload, as a national healthcare stressor, are nursing staff needs and patients’ needs. Balancing the two needs is often challenging for healthcare organizations. However, organizations are exploring strategies to balance between patients’ and nurses’ needs to guarantee safe and quality care while ascertaining that operational costs are sustainable.Competing Needs Impact on Policy Development.

Saville et al. (2019) affirm that nursing capacity should be directly proportional to patient needs, and this can be achieved through equal or fair distribution of nurses with organizational departments. As nurses are fairly distributed, the workload also is equally distributed and managed. Saville et al. (2019) also claim that achieving sufficient nurse staffing levels is essential to patient safety and outcomes. Therefore, balancing nurse and patient needs decreases workloads. A scheme to ensure an appropriate balance is managing the nursing staff workload. With this, the staff can appropriately use the available resources to balance them with the needed resources, which prevent additional costs for overstaffing a department and avert a decline in patient experiences due to understaffing.Competing Needs Impact on Policy Development.

Impacts and How Policy Addresses these Competing Needs

Workload impacts patient and staff needs and organizational resources. It attributes to burnout, which contributes to poor patient outcomes and medical errors. High workloads also facilitate nurse job dissatisfaction and increase staff turnover rates. Consequently, increased staff turnover rates result in heightened costs for training new nurses or hiring temporary employees.Competing Needs Impact on Policy Development.

Policies might address competing needs, including patient and workforce needs, by ascertaining an optimal workforce to patient ratio. This can improve workforce experiences in healthcare organizations and promote patient care outcomes. A policy ensuring an optimal workforce to patient ratio can outline a specific nurse to patient ratio depending on the organization’s department. For example, in a surgical department, a policy can suggest a ratio of 4: 1, whereby a single nurse is assigned to four patients. Having a staffing policy can enhance working conditions for staff members and the safety of care. Additionally, resources that would be used in training temporary nurses can be allocated to other areas.Competing Needs Impact on Policy Development.

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Competing Needs Impact on Policy Development.