Organizational Policies and Practices Responses

Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues

Competing needs, such as the needs of patients, workforce and resources may impact the development of a policy because the competing needs should align with the agenda that policy is advocating for.   For example, a policy addressing adequate nurse staffing is required to meet the patient and workforce needs while minimizing financial cost.  According to Lopez et al., (2015), the effective utilization and deployment of the workforce are of great importance to ensure efficient delivery of healthcare services in terms of quantity, quality, and cost. Organizational Policies and Practices Responses

Failure effectively deploys and utilizing the workforce to do so might lead to a shortage or oversupply of clinical staff. For example, an oversupply of clinical staff might result in economic inefficiencies along with misallocated resources under the guise of adequate staffing. The shortage of staff relates to numerous negative impacts, including lower quality and quantity of care because there are few resources to offer the essential services; work overload of the available nurses leading to burnout, eventually compromising patient safety; and longer waiting times because of inadequate staff leading to preventable patient deaths (Lopez et al., 2015).

Specific competing needs that may impact workload

A good fit between nursing staff and patients’ needs are specific competing needs that may impact workload as a national healthcare issue Organizations are exploring schemes of ensuring a good balance amid nursing staff expertise and size and patient needs to ensure quality and safe care along with outstanding services to patients while ensuring operating costs are sustainable (van den Oetelaar et al, 2016). Organizational Policies and Practices Responses Organizational Policies and Practices Responses

van den Oetelaar et al (2016) claim that nursing capacity should be optimally matched to the needs of patients which is achievable through a sensible and fair distribution of nurses in units, leading to a workload that is equally distributed and manageable for the nursing staff. This necessitates a good balance between nursing staff and patients’ needs. One scheme of ensuring an appropriate balance is the managing workload for nursing staff. These assists balance the needed resources with the available resources, which in turn averts additional costs for overstaffing a unit and averts a decline in employee engagement or patient experiences by understaffing a unit.

The impacts and how policy might address these competing needs

Workload has an impact on both patient and staff needs as well as an organization’s resources.  High causes burnout which leads to errors and poor patient outcomes. High workload also has an impact on nurse job dissatisfaction and burnout, and the intention of nurses to leave. High nursing staff turnover resulting in increased costs for using temporary employees or training new nurses (van den Oetelaar et al., 2016). Organizational Policies and Practices Responses

A policy might address these competing needs by ensuring an optimal nurse to patient ratio which can improve nurse staffing in organizations and improved care outcomes for patients. The policy can outline a particular nurse to patient ratio depending on the type of unit within a healthcare facility.  For instance, the ratio for a surgical and medical unit can be 5: 1, meaning one nurse will be assigned to five patients at most, while in the intensive unit ratio can be 2:1.

As suggested by Livanos (2015), having a staffing policy in a facility can improve the working conditions for the nursing staff as well as the superiority and safety of care.  In turn, costs of adhering to the ratios can be offset by, less need for training new nurses or temporary nurses and reduced turnover of the nursing staff. Organizational Policies and Practices Responses

References

Livanos, N. (2018). A Broadening Coalition: Patient Safety Enters the Nurse-to-Patient Ratio Debate. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 9, 68-70.

Lopes, M., Almeida, Á., & Almada-Lobo, B. (2015). Handling healthcare workforce planning with care: Where do we stand? Human Resources for Health, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-015-0028-0

Organizational Policies and Practices Responses

van den Oetelaar, W. F., van Stel, H. F., van Rhenen, W., Stellato, R. K., & Grolman, W. (2016). Balancing nurses’ workload in hospital wards: study protocol of developing a method to manage workload. BMJ open, 6(11), e012148. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-012148