Benchmark - Capstone Project Change Proposal

Project Change Proposal
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Introduction
A major problem for nursing establishments and staffers is the shortage of staff. Nurses are in very short supply, as older nurses retire and there aren’t enough to fill their ranks from below. This shortage has a knock-on effect for any service which utilizes nurses and their skills – hospitals and clinics cannot offer the same level of services and care which they would otherwise be able to offer to those who need it, meaning that people who need medical help will have to do with sub-standard level of it. The nurses themselves will necessarily face difficulties due to the shortage of staff, ranging from workloads which are too much for them to emotional and physical burnouts as they try to cope with this lack. Therefore, the paper proposes a practical solution in reference to the literatures covered on the same problem.
Background
The subject of appropriate nurse staffing is critical to patient care and safety. When hospitals are staffed with the optimal number of nurses, the cases of patient falls, heart attack, respiratory infections, and medication errors tend to reduce. In addition, the patient’s risk of dying within 60 days of hospital admission is likely to be low when nurses’ workload is low and vise-versa. A study carried by the American Nurses Association (ANA) revealed that 64% of nurses working in the adult medical emergency reported to work for extra hours due to insufficient staffing while 51% had to perform duties they are not trained or experienced (Carlson, 2017). In other studies conducted by ANA, lack of optimal nurse staffing in the hospital had the negative impact on unit admissions, discharge and transfers. Understaffing has a strong correlation with nurses’ demoralization, fatigue, a high level of staff turnover and absenteeism. The problem of nursing shortages in America is caused by several external factors such as unfavorable immigration policies, increased competition between public and private facilities, cyclical shortages of registered nurses (RNs), low nursing school capacities and the recession effect of the economy (Sharon Ann Myers, 2008). However, the situation is solvable since a sensitive sector such as healthcare should not be lulled into complacency.
Problem Statement
Nursing practices around the globe face a common problem of nurse staffing. Nursing is a pivotal section in the medical branch as nurses take significant care of patients in the hospital. Nurse staffing is quite a significant act as it reduces burnouts in nurses from the extensive range of nursing activities. Hospitals that have poor staffing regularly offer poor services and do not attend to their patients in the required manner. The reason behind the argument is that most of the nursing activities are quite demanding, which can easily cause one to have burnouts (Aiken, RN, Dougl, & Sloane, 2012). The paper gives a picot statement on the nursing problems that health centers with poor staffing face by prosing administrative intervention of improving the patient to nurse ratio. The solution to this problem will be guided by the PICOT structure before.
The Purpose of the Change Proposal
The aim is to improve the nurse-patient staff ratios to reduce instances of patients falls, heart attacks, medication errors and nurse burnouts as not only an approach to promote better care, but also a project to meet the statutory requirement as recommended Law. Federal regulation 42CFR 482.23(B) provides that all hospitals should have the sufficient number of competent and licensed nurses and other related personnel to a number that is reasonable proportionate to numbers of patients (Aiken, Clarke, Dougl, & Sloane, 2012). The proposal is also about empowering nurses to manage staffing plans to create a staffing levels that are flexible to match the fluctuation of patients’ demands. Studies have revealed that appropriate nurse staffing is important because it boosts patients’ satisfaction, improves safety outcomes by reducing, pressure ulcers, incidents of falls, and healthcare-associated infection (Aiken, Clarke, Dougl, & Sloane, 2012). Another benefit of optimal staffing helps in reducing medication errors, patient mortality, hospital readmissions, and lengthy stay, patient care costs and as well as curbing nursing fatigue.
PICOT
Population: For adult patients in critical condition
Intervention: does the changing to improve the nurse-patient staff ratio
Comparison: compared to nurse understaffing
Outcome: reduce incidents of falls, heart attacks, medical errors, patient satisfaction pressure ulcers, and healthcare-associated infections (HAIs)
Time: over a patient’s hospital length of stay.
For adult patients in critical conditions, does the changing to improve the nurse-patient staff ratio compared to nurses understaffing reduce more incidents of falls, heart attacks, medication errors, patients’ dissatisfaction, pressure ulcers, and other healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) over a patient’s hospital length of stay?
Literature Search Strategy Employed
Based on the background information and the state of the problem, practical considerations, input from expert advisors and the general conceptual on the topic, the method of literature search included: inclusion and exclusion approach to identify articles that are related to the subject of the project, search methods to retrieve articles, reviewing abstract protocols and searching for scoring published studies for completeness.
Inclusion and Exclusion Approach
The inclusion and exclusion criteria are set along the formulated key project questions to get the articles that provide accurate and relevant evidences. The selected articles had to address both the problem and the measureable solution and outcome. In addition, the articles should suggest an interventi...