Safe work environment

              Safe work environment

The creation of a healthy work environment helps foster excellence in patient care due to its suitability, comfort, and safety. The nursing staff shortages can only be addressed when the work environment promotes quality outcomes in nursing practice. A healthy work environment plays a vital role in staff retention and recruitment, safety, avoiding errors, improving positive patient outcomes, and maintain the financial feasibility of the health organization (Emold, Schneider, & Yagil, 2015). These can only be achieved when the environment is structured such that it is safe, humane, healing, and respectful to the needs, rights, responsibilities, and rights of all parties. That includes the patient, families, nurses, and other health care professionals.

The nurse’s wellbeing means that the hospital environment must satisfy their emotional, physical, psychological needs, and respect their professional rights. Some of the professional rights of the nurses include their ability to exercise in an environment that enables them to practice within their scope of practice and professional standards and also that support and facilitate ethical practice. They have a right to compensation, practice in a manner that fulfills their obligations and to freely advocate for their patients.

AACN developed six standards that will help nurses create and sustain a healthy and safe work environment. These standards are incorporated with evidence-based practices that support the maintenance of nursing professional rights (O’Mahony, 2016) (. The work environment should be structured such that it promotes skilled communication among the nurses. The nurse should possess proficient communication skills to allow them to negotiate their employment term and advocate for their patients efficiently. It should foster true collaboration to ensure unity in the provision of care and avoid overworking and resignation by workers.

The structure of the work environment should promote effective decision making among the nurses. The nurse should be given liberty to make decisions in a difficult situation as long as they adhere to professional standards and the code of ethics. They must be committed to making policies and leading operations in the organizations. Appropriate staffing to ensure that there is a sufficient balance between patients and nurses to avoid errors and negative impacts on nurses’ health. The last standard is that the value of the nurses should be recognized in the organization and compensated according to their work.

According to my nursing practice career, the work environment is not entirely satisfying and does not meet the standards of practice. For example, the nurse-patient ratio is unbalanced, which leads to overworking, fatigue, health problems, and low job productivity resulting in poor patient outcomes.

References

O’Mahony, N. (2016) Nurse burnout and the working environment. Emergency Nurse, 19(5).

Emold, C., Schneider, N., Meller, I., & Yagil, Y. (2015). Communication skills, working environment, and burnout among oncology nurses. European Journal of Oncology Nursing, 15(4), 358-363.

Question 2

                          Safe staffing

Safe staffing is whereby there is an appropriate number of nurses with suitable knowledge, skills, attitude, and experience across the continuum of care to ensure that patient needs are met, and the working environment ensures the safety and promotes the provision of quality care. Patient-nurse ration has a direct impact on the quality of care provided. When a nurse is allocated to many patients, they tend to complete the workload instead that satisfying patient needs and desires. Red flags in staffing are indicators of declining quality of care and increased patient vulnerability.

I encountered a red flag staffing situation in the gynecological ward in our organization. There was a continuous influx of patients, and it made it challenging to meet all patient needs. Medication is often administered at 9 Am, but due to increased patients and prolonged periods handing over reports, nursing care, and inappropriate nurse-patient ration, we ended up administering medication at 11. I was overwhelmed, and I requested the nurse on call for more staff to help solve the situation in preparing theatre patients.

What I would have done differently is to notify the unit manager of the situation of the ward and plan for relocation of more staff to the ward to prevent a decline in patient care quality and timely attainment of objectives. Mandatory staffing ratios would have helped solve the situation. This is because, if initially, there was a balanced ratio of 1:6, the nurses would have easily adjusted to the increased nurse-patient ratio.

The steps that would be taken to prevent the occurrence of similar scenarios in the future include determining the shift to be a minimum safe level then notifying the matron for further action. Thirdly is applying professional judgment to prioritize patient needs and adjusting the workload of the shift consequently. If the workload becomes difficult to manage, additional staff should be sought, and then a continuous review of changes is done. At a critical level, stopping further admissions should be considered.

References

Kleebauer, A. (2014). NICE calls for the use of red flags to trigger an immediate review of care. Nursing Standard, 28(46).