Registered Nurse Workloads Discussion

Students Post:

Working as a direct care registered nurse, the conversation of nurse workloads are often shared among colleagues. This has been an ongoing issue since I entered this profession 5 years ago. Hospitals pursue different goals at the same time: excellent service to their patients, good quality care, operational excellence, and retaining employees (Van den Oetelaar, et. al., 2016).

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Often the workload far exceeds the staff available causing burnout and leading to high turnover rates. As the implementation of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) advances in the United States, many health care organizations are taking bold measures to reorganize their delivery systems and finding that in order to do so, changes must be made to the health care workforce (Pitman & Scully-Ross, 2016). Leaders are faced with coming up with effective ways to retain staff. At one time, work was a major source of friendships, we took our families to company picnics and invited our colleagues over for dinner and now, work is a more transactional place where we go to the office to be efficient, not to form bonds (Jacobs, et. al., 2018). It is a necessary way of life for leaders to learn how to help themselves and others live effectively with continual change and succeed in contexts of uncertainty and complexity (Marshall & Broome, 2017).

The organization where I work has implemented allotting a free charge nurse in order to help alleviate some work overload related stress. The charge nurse does not have patients and is, therefore, free to help with issues that may arise or to help fellow nurses with tasks needing attention.

References

Jacobs, B., McGovern, J., Heinmiller, J., & Drenkard, K. (2018). Engaging employees in well-being: moving from the triple aim to quadruple aim. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 42(3), 231-245. DOI: 10.1097/NAQ.0000000000000303. Retrieved from https://resolver-ebscohost-com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/openurl?

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

Pitman, P., & Scully-Ross, E. (2016). Workforce planning and development in times of delivery system transformation. Human Resources for Health, 14(56), 1-15. DOI: 10.1186/s12960-016-0154-3. Retrieved from https://human-resources-health.biomedcentral.com/t…

Van den Oetelaar, W., 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. British Medical Journal, 6(11). DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2016-012148. Retrieved from https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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