Becoming Influential Analysis

1368 Words6 Pages
Becoming Influential The fact that the nursing story has seldom been told can result in a lack of public awareness of nursing, which downplays the work nurses do, and limits the ability to attract young people to the profession (SULLIVAN, 2013). The public including ourselves and our families will all require a nurse at some time. This paper will focus on the issues and causes revolving around nursing shortages. Deciding on My Message I came to the decision to address the issue of nursing shortages. Nursing shortages is an issue that greatly affects the nursing profession and contributes to many of the problems nurses face. I think this message is important because it can improve the overall quality of nursing and patient care. With this…show more content…
She or he has worked overtime multiple times this week and is fatigued and sick. I have witnessed what I believe to be the worst circumstances for nursing staffing. There was a high demand for nurses in the unit but not enough hired part time staff to replace the sick full time staff. So instead we had sick nurses working overtime shifts. Many have made the comparison of sleep deprivation and driving to drinking and driving. So imagine a bunch of nurses showing up to work intoxicated. These overworked sleep deprived nurses are irritable, tired, and sometimes drowsy. The result of this state can be neglect, improper care and abuse. I have witnessed nurses forget to give patients their medication because they are not in their right mental state. I have also seen nurses who end up not following the care methods they were trained to use. Unfortunately, I have also observed verbal abuse towards a patient from an overworked nurse. Nursing shortages are a problem the health care industry has had for many years. Currently, there is a shortage of 22,000 nurses and by 2022 it is predicted that the shortage will be 60,000 registered nurses. The problem occurs due to the ____. The issue will escalate as the baby boomers require more services in their old age, as current nurses retire and as few students enter the nursing field due to the unappealing image of…show more content…
Nurses who work in a hospital setting gets handed the short stick compared to others. For example, hospital nurses get sick more often, so absent days are much higher than nurses in care homes. This is inevitable due to nurses in hospitals constantly working to the point of exhaustion. The health of these nurses needs to be taken into consideration when evaluating this staffing issue. A vicious cycle is created; there are not enough nurses so they are overworked causing them to become sick and fatigued, once they are sick, there are even less nurses which creates a higher dependency and workload on the even more limited nursing staff. The quality of care provided to patients is jeopardized by the shortage of nurses. The purpose of a nurse is to provide exceptional care to those in need. Unfortunately, these shortages require nurses to take on more patients than they can handle. When hospitals are understaffed, nurses must often make a decision on what care is more important for the patient to receive as they don’t have the ability to provide the care that they could in normal circumstances. Some patient may end up only receiving medication for that day and are denied additional attention. With fatigued nurses, there is a higher risk for error i.e. giving a patient the wrong medication or mixing up patient care information. Statistics

More about Becoming Influential Analysis

Open Document