Pediatric Nursing Shortage and Increased Retention

Pediatric Nursing Shortage and Increased Retention
Name
Institutional Affiliate

Pediatric Nursing Shortage and Increased Retention
Background
Nursing shortage makes for a major human resource challenge limiting the ability of healthcare systems to achieve the common objective of delivering safe and quality patient care across the equally diverse healthcare settings worldwide. The ensuing deficit of qualified nurses, the frontline caregivers in all healthcare systems, creates a wide range of negative implications on healthcare facilities or providers, nursing staff, and the diverse patient populations. For instance, the operational challenges of understaffed healthcare providers show strong correlations to high rates of nurse burnout and low job satisfaction leading to increased nurse turnover rates (Xu, 2020). Such adverse outcomes are further associated with increased operational costs through subsequent recruitment and training of newly hired nurses coupled with the retention of remaining nursing staff members. They also lead to poor or adverse patient outcomes that account for the increased cost of care and low patient referrals for the healthcare providers. Like many other healthcare sectors, the pediatric home health sector is not exempt from the human resource problem of nursing shortage. The children and family caregivers under pediatric home care suffer the outlined adverse implications of nursing shortage. In essence, nursing shortage is a major healthcare human resource problem yielding negative implications for all the stakeholders across the healthcare system. It is, therefore, important for nursing leaders and managers in all healthcare sectors, including pediatric home health, to develop and adopt effective interventional measures to increase nurse retention in addressing the healthcare human resource problem.
Clinical Problem Statement
            The human resource problem of nursing shortage limits the ability of pediatric home health to achieve the said outcome. Weaver (2018) states that children with medical complications account for approximately 25% of hospital days. Weaver (2018) further posits that children with medical complexities account for 40% of hospital charges, translating to one-third of children’s healthcare expenditure (Weaver, 2018). Prolonged hospitalization of children with complicated medical conditions accounts for 80% of the total healthcare expenditure on such patients (Weaver, 2018). Nursing shortage in pediatric home health is a major cause of prolonged hospitalization of children with such medical complications, necessitating the development and implementation of effective interventional measures. Besides increasing the cost of healthcare, the human resource problem in pediatric home health also negatively affects the quality of life for the children’s family caregivers. For instance, parents miss an average of 23 hours of employment to meet the care demands of their children due to nursing shortage in pediatric home health (Weaver, 2018). Nurse burnouts, poor working environments, and low job satisfaction among nurses are cited as some of the key contributors to high nurse turnover and low retention leading to nursing shortage. Pediatric home health is characterized by similar factors and thus requires the implementation of effective countermeasures to increase nurse retention in addressing the human resource problem.
Purpose of the Change Proposal
            The change proposal seeks to provide a platform for developing effective interventional measures towards curbing nursing shortage and increasing nurse retention in pediatric home health settings. Increasing nurse retention in pediatric home health plays a significant role in reducing the length of hospital stays for children with complicated medical needs, thus reducing the overall cost of care. The change proposal also enhances the ability of pediatric home health to provide quality patient care to children and their family caregivers as it allows for the undisrupted implementation of pediatric palliative care plans (Buchan, 2008). In essence, addressing the nursing shortage problem in pediatric home health allows for effective continuum care coordination across the interdisciplinary team assigned to children with medical complexities and their families. Since the pediatric home healthcare nurses are at the frontline of such interdisciplinary teams, their availability and increased retention of nurses are crucial to achieving the key objective of delivering quality patient care in the pediatric home health setting.
PICOT Question
Do the high turnover and low retention rate in pediatric home health nurses leave many medically fragile children without home health nurses and cause an increase in hospital ER visits compared to low retention and fully staffed pediatric home health cases?
Literature Search Strategy Employed
The project employed an elaborate literature research strategy based on the PICOT question above. A literature review of selected peer-reviewed journal articles was conducted. The search for the selected literature for review involved the use of keywords such as nursing shortage, pediatric care, nurse turnover, nurse burnout, pediatric nurse turnover, and pediatric nursing shortage. A total of eight peer-reviewed journal articles or documents were selected and used in the project's development. The selected literature were further categorized into qualitative and quantitative research upon which further assessment of some of their key research elements was conducted. O...