Final Project: Part Four Module 5

Final Project: Part Four Module 5

Impact of Nursing Heavy Workload on Nurses and Patients

Introduction

Nurses are the front lines of health care delivery. Actually, they comprise the largest fraction of health care professionals and provide direct and timely care to the patients across the world. Coordination with and providing safe and secure care to patients is their foremost duty. Along with the hospitals, nursing homes are one of the most important care units, especially in the West. Nursing homes provide multifunctional support to patients by providing medical as well as paramedical support. Nursing homes play a very important role in caring for older patients.

One of the most important objectives for any health and social care organization is to allocate an adequate number of nurses to the patients. Be it hospitals or nursing homes, availability and functionality of adequate number of nurses is very important. The adequacy of nurses-patients ration is very important as employing too many nurses can be very costly for hospitals and care homes; too few nurses can be dangerous to patient health and care. However, the patient security should be the key priority for hospitals (Medical Research News, 2011).

Heavy Workload in Nursing Homes

Nursing homes are special set ups for the people who cannot receive adequate care at home and must need continuous medical care. People in nursing homes do not want direct hospitalization. In fact, they need continuous physical and mental support to carry on with their daily life. Nursing homes can be separate organizations or can be part of a hospital. In nursing homes, usually patients need more care and vigilance then in hospitals. They are usually people suffering from Alzheimer, spinal cord injuries, cancer, or other patients dependent on ventilators. The nursing homes provide a variety of services, depending on patient needs. These services include; professional services, medical care services, personal care services and nursing care services, also social and spiritual services (Wiener, 2003).

The problems nursing homes, nurses and patients face is unavailability of adequate number of nurses in nursing homes. Generally, the ideal number of hours must be adjusted each shift, depending upon patients and their needs. However, this has not been the case for many years. A study reveals that the unavailability of the proper number of nurses has been a very serious issue in health care units. According to the findings, the unavailability or proper number of nurses has been correlated with high patient mortality, which is an alarming issue (Medical Research News, 2011).

There are many problems associated with heavy workloads in nursing homes. The ration of nurses to patients is not constant in nursing homes. In fact, the availability high depends upon the shift. At night shift, the number of nurses available, further decreases. This increases the workload on available nurses.

Models of Nursing Workload

The models of workload become necessary to discuss, as the impacts of workload on nurses and patients also depend upon the type of ...