Local Practice Problem Exploration

Reflect upon the selected national practice problem in Week 1(OBESITY) to address the following. You have to develop this national problem but in the Local Practice (Florida). I selected for the first week OBESITY and I attached the week 1 the Discussion Board that you have one example to develop this week. Remember you have to answer these questions below for OBESITY but in Florida where I live.

1-From a local perspective, how does the practice problem impact nurses, nursing care, healthcare organizations, and the quality of care being provided?

2-Identify the local key stakeholders related to the selected practice problem.

3-Describe one approach used at your unique setting to address this problem. From your perspective, is this intervention effective in addressing the problem? Why or why not? If this practice problem is not addressed at your workplace, propose an intervention that could be implemented on a local scale to address the problem.

Please answer these questions separated and use at least 3 sources no later than 5 years.

LOCAL PRACTICE PROBLEM EXPLORATION 3

Local Practice Problem Exploration

Name

Institutional Affiliation

Date

Hi Dr. Jones and Class

How the problem is affecting the nurses, nursing care, healthcare organization, and the quality of healthcare provided

There are several consequences of the high nursing workload brought by the nursing shortages. The goal of the nurses is to ensure that there is the provision of quality healthcare services, nevertheless, with the growing number in the nursing shortages, this quality is likely to be affected. The increase in the workload caused by nursing shortages leads to the dissatisfaction of the nurses. Nurses are happy when the healthcare services provided causes with a positive change in the life of the patients. Nevertheless, this is not the case when nurses are overwhelmed with the workload. The workload leads to the increase in medication errors which exposes patients to the nosocomial infections and injuries as well as potential deaths. Nurses experience burnout which affects the services they offer to the patients. The burnout issue leads to an increase in the incidence of fatigue among nurses. Nurses are not able to provide services when they are tired and weaker. They have to be healthy both emotionally and physically to ensure that there is a reduction in medication errors (Wheatley, 2017).

The increase in the increases of the nosocomial infection and the readmission rates in the facility implies that the patients are exposed to the high rate of mortality. This interferes with the image of healthcare facilities. The increase in the reported cases of morbidity and mortality rate of hospital leads to the reduction in the financial support from the healthcare insurance firms such as Medicaid and Medicare. The increase in the nosocomial infection also implies that nurses are not free from the potential spread of the infections and this causes a threat to the well-being of the patients (Kakeman et al., 2019).

The local stakeholders related to the practice problem

The local stakeholders in the nursing shortages are the patients, the families of the patients, the healthcare organizations, and healthcare professionals with the inclusion of nurses with a different specialty, the work community, and the physicians. These parties are both affected by the shortages of nurses. Nurses experience an increase in the workload and this leads to the poor quality of healthcare being delivered to the patients. The families are affected since they have to pay for the readmission of the patients after nosocomial infections (Manyisa & van Aswegen, 2017).

The stakeholders are also playing an important role in advocating for the changes in the organization. The physicians and nurses can be united to call for an increase in the number of nurses to help in addressing the issue of nursing shortages. Both parties in advocating for the quality healthcare services to the patients through pressurizing the management of the hospital to employ more patients so that the issues related to the morbidity and mortality are addressed (Wheatley, 2017).

One approach to be used to address the problem

One of the effective approaches that can be used by the organization to help in addressing the issue of the nursing shortage and the long working hours is to ensure that more nurses are employed and retained. It is possible to hire more nurses, however, they cannot be maintained to ensure that they offer long-term services to the patients. The recruitment of more nurses should also be accompanied by approaches to retaining them. The retention process can be achieved through motivation. The motivational approaches that can be adopted can involve the good payment, career growth and development through supporting the training of the nurses, and ensuring that nurses are working under safe environment to prevent harms and injuries (Haegdorens et al., 2019).

References

Haegdorens, F., Van Bogaert, P., De Meester, K., & Monsiens, K. (2019). The impact of nurses staffing levels and nurse’s education on patient mortality in medical and surgical wards: an observational multicentre study. BMC health services research, 19(1), 1-9. doi:org/10.1186/s12913-019-4688-7 Kakeman, E., Raeissi, P., Raoofi, S., Soltani, A., & Sokhanvar, M. (2019). Occupational stress and associated risk factors among nurses: a cross-sectional study. Contemporary Nurse, 55(2-3), 237-249. doi:org/10.1080/10376178.2019.1647791 Manyisa, Z. M., & van Aswegen, E. J. (2017). Factors affecting working conditions in public hospitals: A literature review. International journal of Africa nursing sciences, 6, 28-38. doi:org/10.1016/j.ijans.2017.02.002 Wheatley, C. (2017). Nursing overtime: should it be regulated?. Nursing Economics, 35(4), 213.