Nurse Staffing Committee in Texas - Essay Example

"Nurse Staffing Committee in Texas" is a great example of a paper on care.
The staffing committee is comprised of a Chief Nursing Officer and a 60% nurses’ representation. It sets out the minimum staffing requirements based on the services provided, the intensity of care, patient characteristics, standard nursing requirements and the context of nursing care.

The current and standards by accreditation organizations, nursing associations and other professional bodies are considered. The ethics are developed and codes formulated.  The nurses are evaluated in an effective manner according to the nursing services they will offer. The patient plans, patient needs, sensitive indicators of quality and nurse satisfaction considerations are also taken into account. After considering all these factors the qualified personnel is then chosen to satisfy the staffing requirements.

Conferring to staffing communication, there should be a process of reporting concerns and to whom. The nurses are also encouraged to give input to the committee on their staffing concerns. A review, assessment and feedback during the committee meetings should take place to underscore the concerns raises by the nursing staff. A prohibition on any retaliatory remarks or actions should be in place. The use of safe harbour peer review process according to the Occupations Code can also be used.

Sensitive outcomes should be handled carefully when addressing issues of staff adequacy. This also goes hand in hand with the complaints of patients regarding nursing and staffing. Staffing communication should be well facilitated and effected so that problem identification can be quick and addressed adequately.

Sample Email to a legislator

Dear Representative (Name of Legislator)

I am writing to you about the biting need for adequate staffing of nurses in (district). As a constituent in your district, I ask that you fight for an increase of highly qualified staff nurses to the hospitals in your area of Jurisdiction. In an EPC report, lowly staffed hospitals had adverse outcomes which were directly linked to the low nurse staffing levels.  For instance, my local hospital (Give name) has only (state no of nurses if necessary) who are barely enough for the many patients there.

In hospitals with high staffing, patients had lower rates of adverse outcomes of Pneumonia, Upper gastric bleeding, surgeries and longer hospital stay that the case with lowly staffed hospitals. Generally, higher staffing has a 3 to 25 % reduction in adverse outcomes depending on the cases.

Another study by the American Nursing Association revealed that each additional surgical patient per nurse was linked to a 7% higher likelihood of dying within a month of admission. Hospitals with a nurse to patient ratio of as low as 1:4, more than 4000 patient had reportedly died and over 5000 for those with 1:9 ratio.

Among the nurses surveyed especially in (say district), many of them are dissatisfied with their jobs more than other professions. Poor staffing has demoralized most of them. Only 35.7% were at least contented with their work. A whole 44.9% opined that the deterioration in the quality of care due to poor staffing was escalating with the increase in dissatisfaction.

While adequate staffing is costly, the cost of the loss is even higher. Patient costs will escalate more with poor services. The probability of death also increases. It is therefore an urgent need that requires therapy and medication. Thank You