Week 5 Discussion - Nurse Practitioner

Nursing Home Staffing Shortages and Other Problems Persist Student's Name Institution Affiliation Course Name & Code Instructor's Name Date Nursing Home Staffing Shortages and Other Problems Persis The care homes in the U.S. have been reporting staff shortages, burnout, and poor infection control after the pandemic, as captured in a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. These challenges, coupled with low staff and residents' vaccination, are owing to inadequate federal and state reimbursements to compensate for team member wages necessary to attract and retain essential workers. While it is a good resource for employment agencies, it usually entails costly fees from private employment agencies. Hence, the industry is still in shambles even when there are some changes in the availability of PPE and the ideas used to retain the equipment. According to Jacobs (2024), Elizabeth White from Brown University explains that the critical problem is that the current sources of financing for elder care are insufficient and inadequate, backed up by the lack of political determination to provide for the growing needs of older people. The report calls for substantial changes to guarantee that the experiences from the pandemic result in actual changes to the care system. Furthermore, the shortage of staff and lack of proper infection control measures in nursing homes has far-reaching consequences on nursing practice at the micro level. Nurses and nurse aides are professionals at the health facilities' frontline; they stagger between high workloads and stress due to high turnover and burnout. According to Heijden & Xu (2019), higher burnout levels in nurses are linked to increased occupational turnover intention, while the increased meaning of work reduces burnout. Such a situation may result in the negligence of the client's need for an adequate workforce to attend to various needs like administering drugs, taking vital body checks, and even general care of individuals (Jacobs, 2024). Another factor attributed to the high turnover rate is that the...