Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues Discussion
Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues
Quite often, nurse leaders are faced with ethical dilemmas, such as those associated with choices between competing needs and limited resources. Resources are finite, and competition for those resources occurs daily in all organizations.
For example, using 12-hour shifts has been a strategy to retain nurses. However, evidence suggests that as nurses work more hours in a shift, they commit more errors. How do effective leaders find a balance between the needs of the organization and the needs of ensuring quality, effective, and safe patient care?
In this Discussion, you will reflect on a national healthcare issue and examine how competing needs may impact the development of policies to address that issue.
To Prepare:
Review the Resources and think about the national healthcare issue/stressor you previously selected for study in Module 1 (please see attached).
Reflect on the competing needs in healthcare delivery as they pertain to the national healthcare issue/stressor you previously examined.
Post an explanation of how competing needs, such as the workforce, resources, and patients, may impact policy development. Then, describe any specific competing needs that may impact the national healthcare issue/stressor you selected. What are the impacts, and how might policy address these competing needs? Be specific and provide examples. Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues Discussion
Healthcare organizations formulate and implement policies that address current healthcare issues and promote quality care delivery. However, the presence of ever-increasing demands and competing needs may jeopardize these policies by prompting policymakers to establish a balance between competing priorities. According to Korownyk et al. (2017), it is essential to consider and balance priorities amidst the competing demands and opportunities in the current healthcare systems. In this sense, it is complex to address one issue at the expense of other salient concerns. Examples of competing needs that influence organizational policies include the need for adequate allocation of resources, nurse staff shortages, and ever-increasing patients’ demands for quality, timely, convenient, and patient-centered care. The three competing needs are inseparable because they impact care outcomes and determine overall healthcare sustainability. For example, inadequate resources affect the healthcare workforce’s ability to provide quality care. In turn, the interplay between resource allocations and healthcare and professionals’ ability to deliver quality care affects patients’ demands. As a result, it is vital to develop policies that balance these priorities.
Nursing Staff Shortage and Competing Needs
Nursing staff shortage poses a significant challenge to the current healthcare systems, considering the potential consequences of understaffed healthcare departments. The competing needs that impact nursing staff shortage are the obligation for nurses to provide quality care to patients with ever-increasing demands for quality, the requirement for nurses to deliver quality, convenient, and timely care amidst organizational challenges like burnout and increased workloads and the overarching demand for cost-effective and accessible healthcare services. Haddad et al. (2022) argue that the US Bureau of Labor projects that the country will need more than 275,000 additional nurses from 2020 to 2030. In this sense, the major causes of discrepancies between the number of nurses and the ever-increasing patient population include inequitable workforce distribution across regions, a high turnover rate exacerbated by workplace stressors, workplace incivility, an aging workforce, and a lack of inter-agency collaboration between healthcare institutions and nurse educators. Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues Discussion
At the organizational level, it is crucial to perceive workplace cultures and contextual factors like burnout, exposure to violence, increased workload, and a lack of professional and social support as the major causes of a high turnover rate, intentions to quit, and subsequent nursing staff shortages. Therefore, healthcare organizations should develop institutional policies that address nursing staff shortages and competing needs to improve workplace environments, address cultural incivility, and eliminate workplace stressors.
What are the impacts, and how might policy address these competing needs?
Nurse staff shortages result in multiple adverse consequences on care quality, including increasing workloads, exacerbating stress, facilitating intentions to quit, and limiting the workforce’s ability to provide quality and timely care. A policy can address nurse staff shortages by focusing on interventions for talent retention and creating a supportive workplace environment. According to Khalil & Alameddine (2020), poor remuneration, unfavorable working conditions, poor workforce management, and limited career development opportunities are among priority areas for talent retention policies. In this sense, it is possible to reduce nurse staff shortages by enhancing nurses’ scope of practice, providing financial incentives and deserved compensation, cultivating a supportive working environment, offering opportunities for career development, implementing training programs to enhance their knowledge and competencies, eliminating elements of incivility, including violence, and providing social and psychological support to employees encountering stress. These strategies are vital in reducing nurse staffing shortages alongside related competing demands. Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues Discussion
References
Haddad, L. M., Toney-Butler, T. J., & Annamaraju, P. (2022, February 22). Nursing shortage. StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493175/
Khalil, M., & Alameddine, M. (2020). Recruitment and retention strategies, policies, and their barriers: A narrative review in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. Health Science Reports, 3(4). https://doi.org/10.1002/hsr2.192
Korownyk, C., McCormack, J., Kolber, M. R., Garrison, S., & Allan, G. M. (2017). Competing demands and opportunities in primary care. Canadian Family Physician, 63(9), 664–668. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5597006/ Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues Discussion
