Benchmark - Capstone Project Change Proposal: Shortage of Nursing

Benchmark - Capstone Project Change Proposal: Shortage of Nursing
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Institutional Affiliation
Benchmark - Capstone Project Change Proposal: Shortage of Nursing
Background
Nurses comprise the largest percentage of health care professionals that are at the forefront in ensuring effective patient care and safety in hospitals. Due to their role in health care systems, nurses are directly associated with the overall performance of health care workers (Maresova et al., 2020). Significant efforts have been made in improving the work environment for nurses in a bid to attract and retain nursing professionals and improve patient care and outcomes. However, while the challenge of nurse shortage has existed for decades, traditional approaches that have been implemented have shown limited success due to the aging workforce, underemployment, and the global nature of nurse understaffing (Owens, 2019). Since the issue of nurse shortage is multipronged, there is a need for collaboration from different health care departments to find lasting solutions and improve nurse experiences which will ultimately reduce nurse turnovers and increase retention. Shortage of nursing requires collaborative participation among nurse practitioners and educators, as well as governments, health care executives, and media houses to catalyze initiating programs that will help culminate the challenge. This collaboration can further be extended to include patients and their families as well as the community to build working solutions to the issue of shortage of nursing.
Clinical Problem statement
The increasing rates of nurse turnover resulting in worsening levels of nursing shortage have become a huge concern in the health care sector with organizations witnessing increased spending in recruiting, training, and retaining nurse professionals. For many years, the nursing shortage has been attributed to the low job satisfaction due to a poor working environment that drives nurses to find better settings (Mehdaova, 2017). Nurse burnouts and lack of teamwork and a friendlier environment have been cited as the main reasons for nurse dissatisfaction. Besides, poor leadership on the side of management such as lack of respect, recognition, and honesty have forced nurses to leave their previous workstations in search of better experiences. As the number of nurses leaving their places of employment exceeds the rates of recruiting new nurses, this imbalance results in inadequate staffing and nursing shortage. Nurse shortage is a clinical concern as the quality of patient care and the success of health care organizations depend on the roles played by nurses as front-end patient care providers.
Purpose of The Change Proposal in Patient Care and Health Care Transformation
This change proposal recommends interdisciplinary collaboration among nurse practitioners and educators, as well as government organizations, health care executives, including the management and leadership, as well as the media houses to understand the nature of the challenge and forge working solutions to end the nursing shortage. An interdisciplinary approach in health care organizations will ensure that different experts work together towards a common goal of improving patient care. Nurse practitioners and educators have a rich experience in dealing with patients while the management or leadership departments will collaborate in ensuring better work environments for nurses (Price & Reichert, 2017). Besides, governments will play a critical role in funding programs that are relevant in addressing the challenges of nurse shortage as well as formulating and enacting policies that will improve nurse experiences at workplaces. In terms of publicity, media houses play a critical role in society by covering relevant content that directly addresses the challenges of modern nurses in terms of patient care. Lastly, patients, their families, and the community can provide better insights into understanding the impacts of the issue and possible ways of addressing the problem.
PICOT Question
Among health care organizations facing financial uncertainties (P), an interprofessional collaboration(I), help to better address the challenge of nursing shortage (O) as opposed to not applying the intervention (C) within the next 10 years (T)?
The PICOT question employs five PICOT elements to establish evidence-based approaches to dealing with the problem of nursing shortage. The first element is (P) or the population, which represents health care organizations that are struggling with financial uncertainties. This first element recognizes the importance of funding in increasing nurse staffing. The second component of the PICOT question is the intervention requiring interprofessional collaboration that brings different experts together to effect a change. This intervention is compared (C) with a lack of the approach. The PICOT question also contains the element of time where the outcomes will be evaluated after 10 years.
Literature Search strategy
In this proposal, an organized structure of relevant terms will be used to search different databases for credible professional and academic articles within the last 5-10 years. The search strategy will include a combination of terms in achieving better and accurate results. This approach is known as the Boolean logic where the use of Boolean operators such as AND, OR, and NOT are used to facilitate the variety of different combinations of keywords and subject headings. This strategy will particularly account for keywords and phrases, search terms, wildcard variations of keywords, and subject headings. The proposal will benefit from a plethora of materials available online in medical and nursing journal repositories such as CINAHL Plus, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, ERIC, PubMed Central, and PsycINFO. To maintain relevance within the nursing profession, websites will be avoided as this might provide biased information since they are not peer-reviewed.
Evaluation of Literature
Evaluation Criteria

Article 1

Article 2

Article 3

Author, Journal, and working link

Tamata, A.T., Mohammadnezhad, M., & Tamani, L. PLoS One, 16(5), e0251890. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251890

Rawlinson, C., Carron, T., Cohidon, C., Arditi, C., Hong, Q.N., Pluye, P., Peytremann-Bridevaux, P., & Gilles, I. International Journal of Integrated Care, 21(2), 32. http://doi.org/10.5334/ijic.5589

Owens, N. Journal of Nursing Education and Practice: International Peer-reviewed and Open Access Journal for the Nursing Specialists, 9(3). https://doi.org/10.5430/jnep.v9n3p125

Article title and publication year

Registered nurses’ perceptions on the factors affecting nursing shortage in the Republic of Vanuatu Hospitals: A qualitative study (2021)

An overview of reviews on interprofessional collaboration in primary care: barriers and facilitators (2021)

The nursing shortage: a status report (2019)

Aim/purpose of the study

Identify affecting nursing shortage and the impact on registered nurses

Identify barriers facilitating factors and barriers to effective interprofessional collaboration in primary care settings

Identity strategies that have been implemented to address the issue of the growing demand for registered nurses in different stakeholders and agencies

Study design

Qualitative research design

Qualitative study design

Qualitative study

Setting and sample

Hospitals in Vanuatu Pacific county

Primary care physicians, the nurses in primary care, specialty care provider, pharmacists, mental healthcare providers

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Findings

Challenging working environment, perceived risks, and reinforcing factors result in nursing shortage

Barriers occur at organizational and inter-individual levels. The barriers are caused by lack of training, clear roles, poor communi...