Health Care

Health care administrators must be able to make evidence-based decisions in a rapidly changing climate in order to succeed. Identify a specific health care administration issue or barrier that you want to utilize as the focus for your health care research paper. In 750-1,000 words, propose the topic for your health care research paper. Include the following:

Describe the health care administration issue or barrier.
Summarize the stakeholders affected by the health care issue or barrier.
Discuss the relevance of the health care administration problem as it relates to health care research.
Explain the role of health care and science research in solving the identified problem.
Provide at least two quantitative or qualitative articles that support your proposed topic, and include an explanation of why these support your topic.
While APA style is not required for the body of this assignment, solid academic writing is expected, and documentation of sources should be presented using APA formatting guidelines, which can be found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

You are not required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite.

Benchmark Information

This benchmark assignment assesses the following programmatic competencies:

BS Health Information Management

3.6: Apply principles of research and clinical literature evaluation to improve outcomes.

ANSWER

Addressing Nursing Shortage

The growing demand for health care services in the United States has experienced a nursing shortage which has created a barrier in the healthcare administration. The nursing shortage is led by different factors, including a large workforce, increased care needs, healthcare legislation, and a high number of nurses reaching their retirement age. The current Registered Nurse turnover has been five times higher than the healthcare organizations estimate. (Haddad, Annamaraju and Toney-Butler, 2020). For this reason, the high turnover rate of RN has become a dysfunctional human resource issue, especially when healthcare organizations continue losing the RN workforce. The high number of nurses retiring has been a vital part of the nursing shortage. The retiring nurse workforce has put more struggles on the registered nurses, causing them to leave their positions without replacement.

Stakeholders Affected by Nursing Shortage

Patients

The nursing shortage greatly impacts patients who are major stakeholders in healthcare. The lack of enough nurses means that there are fewer nurses who need to care for more patients. One of the major concerns of nursing shortage is high patient mortality. Nurses have neglected and overlooked patients due to the high workload among nurses in short-staffed facilities, causing high death rates. The nursing shortage has also led to high morbidity and errors in inpatient care (Haddad, Annamaraju, and Toney-Butler, 2020). The nursing shortfall has led to reduced patient satisfaction rates. This is because the overworked nurses fail to care for the patients due to high fatigue and burnout. The nursing shortage has led to high patient-to-nurse ratios and longer shifts which have undermined the quality of patient care. Without adequate nursing staff, patients are experiencing increased length of stay, re-admission due to complications, and increased wait time.

Nurses

Nurses have been affected by the increased nurse shortage in the healthcare workforce. As more nurses surrender their duties, the remaining nurses are forced to take up the work leading to a high workload. Nurse burnout amongst the remaining workforce has been high due to insufficient nursing staff (Reith, 2018). Nurses have been forced to work under increasingly strenuous conditions leaving their workdays extremely tired and probably injured. Nurses have continued to slowly lose their passion for their passion and are continuously feeling disheartened to accomplish their duties. The nursing shortage conditions have made it easy for nurses to make errors and mistakes while on the job.

Healthcare organizations

Another major stakeholder being affected by the nurse shortage is the healthcare organizations. The high rate of turnover impacts healthcare organizations due to high recruitment costs and reduced profitability due to loss resulting from errors made due to insufficient staffing. Hospitals are being influenced by the nursing shortage financially as they try to keep up with the high demand and the need to remain competitive. For instance, healthcare organizations have been forced to increase their overtime pay to ensure that the remaining nurses make up for the low nurse staffing during their shifts. Healthcare organizations are also offering sign-on bonuses and better benefits packages that are more than they would pay before an hourly nurse.

Healthcare and Science Research

Healthcare research focuses on finding new knowledge that can lead to health policies, treatment, and care changes. This is because it offers information about healthcare trends, public health interventions, risk factors, patterns of care, functional abilities, and healthcare costs. Healthcare research remains valuable in understanding the complexities to create authentic and reliable knowledge (Blandford, 2018). Nurses have been at the front line in the healthcare organizations offering hands-on care for patients and giving the healthcare professionals information required in making decisions for the patients. ANA argues that the nursing workforce is the key to handling the healthcare system’s problems. Healthcare researchers are examining the factors and issues that impact the provision of high-quality and affordable healthcare. The nursing shortage has been one of the significant effects of quality care. This makes the nursing shortage an important factor in healthcare research. There is a need to understand the nursing shortage due to the negative impacts on healthcare administration and the need to improve care. The healthcare providers and policy will utilize the research on the nursing shortage to make significant evidence-based decisions.

Health care and science research play a great role in understanding an identified problem in healthcare. Insights offered by health research lessen the impact of great health problems by developing new policies and interventions. Resolving the nursing shortage problem in healthcare administration requires strategic steps to address issue. The health care and science research will help identify the factors leading to the nursing shortage and examine the most effective strategies to overcome the nursing shortage. For instance, healthcare research will offer long-term and short-term solutions to the nursing shortage.

Nursing Shortage Articles

Griffiths et al., (2018) conducted a systematic review on the association between nurse staffing levels and adverse patient results. The research aimed to identify the nursing care overlooked in acute adult wards and examine the association of the neglected care with the nursing staff. The study’s findings indicated that low registered nursing staff is linked with the incidences of missed nursing care in healthcare organizations. The study supports the relevance of addressing the nursing shortage to improve healthcare administration and quality of care.

Hayward et al., (2016) conducted qualitative research to determine the factors that lead to a high turnover of experienced nurses, such as the decision to leave the healthcare setting and seek alternative employment. The qualitative interpretive descriptive approach found out that the decision to leave practice was impacted by interrelated work settings and personal influences such as increased workload demands, higher patient acuity, and low satisfaction. The study supports the topic since it highlights the need for healthcare organizations to address the nursing shortage and lower turnover to retain experienced nurses to contain costs and maintain quality patient care.

References

Blandford, A. (2018). Lessons from working with researchers and practitioners in healthcare. Interactions, 26(1), 72-75.

Griffiths, P., Recio‐Saucedo, A., Dall’Ora, C., Briggs, J., Mariotti, A., Meredith, P., … & Missed Care Study Group. (2018). The association between nurse staffing and omissions in nursing care: a systematic review. Journal of advanced nursing, 74(7), 1474-1487.

Haddad, L. M., Annamaraju, P., & Toney-Butler, T. J. (2020). Nursing shortage. StatPearls [Internet].

Hayward, D., Bungay, V., Wolff, A. C., & MacDonald, V. (2016). A qualitative study of experienced nurses’ voluntary turnover: learning from their perspectives. Journal of clinical nursing, 25(9-10), 1336-1345.

Reith, T. P. (2018). Burnout in United States healthcare professionals: a narrative review. Cureus, 10(12).