Impact of Nursing Understaffing on Patient Health
Despite the understaffing of nurses being linked with hospital-acquired infections, injuries, or even death due to these healthcare providers’ inability to render their services adequately, this issue remains poorly addressed and continues to escalate every year. A low nurse-patient ratio could lead to inaccurate records, underperformed nursing practices due to burnout and erroneous medications. The Centers for Disease Control estimated that about 1.7 million people get infected while in hospitals, with roughly 909000 dying from the same each year, the highest cases recorded for infections of the urinary tract and surgeries. The problem of understaffing poses a severe threat to patients’ health, including issues of conditions occurring after brain surgery leading to alarming health complications in inadequately nursed patients.
Most infections occurring in the hospital are caused by failure to ensure an aseptic environment when handling patients. When a patient is recovering from a surgical operation, the nurse must ensure that the injury remains sterile by employing aseptic procedures every time they the patient’s wound. Due to understaffing, a nurse may be worked out as they cater to more than the recommended number of patients, resulting in errors during nursing care, including infections. For instance, cases of urinary tract infections in catheterized patients and post-surgical hospital infections increase by 0.001% and 0.002% for every 10% increase in nurse burnout. The high workload on nurses results not only in burnout. Still, it could result in stress that prevents nurses from handling critical nursing tasks with a sober mind, hence could forget certain aspects of infection prevention during the rounds. Furthermore, nurses are subjected to other obligations outside their job description, which increases the chances of burnout and stress and hence more risk of infections or errors in administering medication.
The problem of nursing understaffing and its influence on patient outcomes has been extensively studied with results showing a need to implement the recommendations put forward by researchers working independently. Cases of patients getting infected in hospitals since nurses couldn’t adequately attend to them have been on the rise in recent years. The health of patients admitted with breathing problems could deteriorate if a nurse fails to check on them due to a heavy workload continually. If such problems go unnoticed, the patients could develop brain damage resulting from insufficient oxygen in brain tissues. Unfortunately, most health care facilities often don’t relate such incidences with the poor nurse to patient ratio. The results could lead to deaths that could be prevented if hospital administrators increase the number of nurses’ to meet the standard recommendations, which would enable them to exercise their duties effectively.
The consequences of the low nurse to patient ratio affect the patient, the nurse, and everyone involved, not to mention the billions of money lost every year. The health of the patient deteriorates and could even lead to chronic illnesses or even death. Nurses subjected to burnout suffer psychologically, making it even harder for them to ensure they offer high-quality patient care services. The patients who go back to the hospital with illnesses arising from infections point to a need to improve nursing stuffing to reduce the incidences. Furthermore, the monetary losses resulting from the problems associated with nurses’ understaffing could better be used to employ more nurses to improve patient outcomes. Additionally, hospital administration should take nurses’ services seriously and offer them a favorable working environment that promotes the great urgency of nursing in healthcare.