Abstract

There is a growing population of sickly people that are being taken care of in the hospital. The number of staff working to help with patient care greatly impacts the outcomes of patients. Nursing staffing shortages is causing longer work hours sometimes under hectic conditions. This can lead to fatigue, injury, and lack of motivation. These nurses then begin to feel burnout which can lead to nurses quitting their jobs. Replacing staff causes companies to invest more money. Nurses who suffer in these environments are more prone to making mistakes. As a result of units not being appropriately staffed medication mistakes are happening. An increase in staffing levels have been shown to result in better patient outcomes compared to lower nurse staffing levels(Garrett, 2008). Medication errors are one of the most common medical errors. There are nurses who have to take care of six patients at a time and that can be overwhelming when each patient has different needs. For each patient a nurse is assigned to there are scheduled medications that need to be given. In addition there are new orders that are constantly being updated by physicians for nurses to perform. Due to the heavy workloads a large amount of medication administration mistakes are made and can have adverse effects on patients. By creating a standard staffing guideline can help alleviate this issue. If hospitals can make a set standard for med-surg units of having five patients max to one nurse.

Date of publication

Fall 12-7-2023

Document Type

MSN Capstone Project (Local Access)

Language

english

Persistent identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10950/4537

Degree

Masters in Nursing Administration

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