Prepare this assignment as a 1,500-1,750 word paper using the instructor feedback from the previous course assignments and the guidelines below. PICOT Question Revise the PICOT question you wrote in t

Running Header: Nurse Shortage Joseph 1

COVID-19 and the Nursing Profession

Jessy Joseph

Grand Canyon University

Introduction

While the importance of a strong public healthcare systems has been highlighted for years, the COVID-19 crisis has added a sense of urgency to these needed reforms. This pandemic has highlighted several fractures within the healthcare system. With these issues gushing in indiscriminately, nurses seem to be at the helm. For instance, shortage of testing and supplies, lack of contact tracing, extended home stays, burnout of nurses, overwhelmed hospitals and managing the crisis using personal protective equipment. Nurses have been frontline in caring for COVID-19 patients, as well as in prevention, education, and other preventative health measures to slow the spread of disease, however with many hospitals facing the issue of under staffing, patient safety and care quality have been questioned. This essay will use two qualitative research articles to emphasize the existing issue of nursing shortage in many hospitals across the country and the subsequent consequences such as overload burnouts, patient safety issues and ethical questions.

Summary of studies

The two articles that will be elaborated in this essay will be “Effects of nurse work environment on job dissatisfaction, burnout, intention to leave” by Nantsupawat A;Kunaviktikul W;Nantsupawat R;Wichaikhum A;Thienthong H;Poghosyan L and” Hospital nurse staffing and patient mortality, nurse burnout, and job dissatisfaction” by Aiken et al. Although these two articles will be the primary source to subjugate the causes, other resources will be also used for rationale.

The first article assesses nurse turnover rate and the contributors of nurse shortage such as job dissatisfaction, poor working environment and intention to leave. This study was conducted in Thailand; however, the research has key findings that are similar many research studies done in the United States. Unlike when these studies were conducted, the world now faces the COVID19 pandemic, and this calls for reforms, especially in the nursing sector ever more. The second article assess “the association between patient-to-nurse ratio and patient mortality, failure-to-rescue (deaths following complications) among surgical patients, and factors related to nurse retention” (Aiken et al.). Both these articles address the issues of nurse shortage, the consequences of it and how it affects patient safety as well as care.

PICOT

After understanding the causes of nurse burnout and consequent shortage, should futhering nursing enrollment be a solution to combating the issue rather than retention in the U.S healthcare system?

Both these articles use qualitative research methods that includes cross-sectional analysis of surveyed data collected from nurses in the U.S and a foreign country. Both these research studies describe the predictors of nurse shortage and burnout while describing how this affects the quality of care provided to patients. Additionally, the intervened group are nurses who have faced chronic burnout at workplaces and their comparisons would be nurses from the second research study that admit having a lower nurse-to-patient ratio prevents job dissatisfaction, burnout and lower failure-to-rescue rate for patients admitted with high risks.

Method of studies

Conventionally, both the studies used cross-sectional surveys of their randomly selected samples. The first survey collected data from “1351 nurses working in 43 inpatient units in five university hospitals across Thailand. The participants completed the Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index, the Maslach Burnout Inventory, and measures of job dissatisfaction and intention to leave. Logistical regression models assessed the association between work environment and nurse-reported job dissatisfaction, burnout, and intent to leave” ( Nantsupawat et al.). These surveys were designed to measure several predictors of nurse turnover. The second research analyzed data from “10 184 staff nurses surveyed, 232 342 general, orthopedic, and vascular surgery patients discharged from the hospital between April 1, 1998, and November 30, 1999, and administrative data from 168 nonfederal adult general hospitals in Pennsylvania” (Aiken et al.). As mentioned earlier, both these methods were practical but had several limitations. These research articles provide support for the predictors of nurse turnover and the subsequent undermined quality of care, however both these studies were conducted in a time when COVID19 didn’t exist. The results of the studies can help create reformations but might not be prevalent to the current needs of the healthcare system.

Results of the studies and Ethical consideration.

Results from the first study measured that after adjusting an additional patient per nurse, there was about 7% increase in patient mortality (i.e, increase in the likelihood of dying within 30 days of admission) and a 7% increase in the odds of failure-to-rescue. Furthermore, an additional patient per nurse caused 23% increase in odds of job dissatisfaction and burnout.

As for the second research, though many numbers were not disclosed, the results mentioned “Nurses working in university hospitals with better work environments had significantly less job dissatisfaction, intention to leave, and burnout.” (Nantsupawat et. Al.).

Additionally, the studies didn’t hinder with any ethical standards of conduct, was truly based on opinions from practicing nurses. However, the measures also indicated that surveys conducted in high-risk patient sector such as those after surgery might have been a stressful environment to begin with, thus a lower nurse-to-patient ratio alone cannot provide for improvement for the patient mortality rate.

Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic has made clear that our care delivery systems are fractured and lack an effective, coordinated response to population health crises. Nurse shortage issue must be handled with high priority as nurse burnout and turnover rates can greatly affect the healthcare system during the pandemic. A solution to this issue would be hiring more new grad nurses thus funding would not be an issue and hence reduce the patient-to-nurse ratio. Nurses have a unique perspective on and expertise in managing infectious disease outbreaks, mitigating health inequities, addressing social drivers of health, and designing innovative, patient-centered care delivery models. These capabilities are critical now, more than ever to reforming a better health care system.

is the most important profession that contributes to the overall growth of health and will tinue to exist as it is, thus it is important to continuously monitor its impact and growth.

References:

Aiken LH;Clarke SP;Sloane DM;Sochalski J;Silber JH;. (n.d.). Hospital nurse staffing and patient mortality, nurse burnout, and job dissatisfaction. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12387650/

Nantsupawat A;Kunaviktikul W;Nantsupawat R;Wichaikhum OA;Thienthong H;Poghosyan L;. (n.d.). Effects of nurse work environment on job dissatisfaction, burnout, intention to leave. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27882573/