Assessment 3 Instructions Business Case for Change
A Sample Answer For the Assignment: Assessment 3 Instructions Business Case for Change
Title: Assessment 3 Instructions Business Case for Change
Assessment 3 Instructions Business Case for Change
Nurses are among the most crucial and majority of the healthcare providers in health organizations. They provide crucial care that aims at promoting recovery, rehabilitation, and peaceful death among their patients. However, despite this role, nurses operate in highly complex and dynamic work environments. They constantly experience challenges such as work-related dilemmas that increase the need for ethical decision making. They also suffer from work-related challenges such as high workload and stress, which cause burnout among them (Moran et al., 2020). Often, most nurses choose to leave their organizations, causing an acute shortage or imbalance in the nursing workforce. Besides, other issues such as aging workforce, low intake of nursing students by training institutions, and lack of adequate nursing educators also worsen the shortage of nurses. Therefore, this presentation examines the issue of nursing shortage and proposes a solution that can be adopted in healthcare to address it.
The selected economic problem is the inadequate nursing staffing or nursing shortage. According to statistics, the global population of nurses is 29 million., with 3.9 million nurses being in America. However, America still has an acute shortage of nurses despite having the most number of nurses globally. Statistics show that America will require more than 275000 nurses from 2020 to 2030. In addition, statistics show that more than 1 million nurses in America are now aged at least 50 years. This implies that the country will experience a shortage of more than one million nurses in the next decade. Several factors such as the aging nurses’ population, lack of nurse educators, workplace violence, burnout, and inequitable distribution of the workforce in healthcare contributes to the problem. Therefore, effective solutions should be explored to address it.
Nursing shortage have negative impacts on healthcare, patients, community, and colleagues. First, it increases nurses’ workload, which causes burnout, occupational stress, low job satisfaction, and high turnover rates among nurses. Nursing shortage also lowers the quality of care due to increased cases of safety issues such as medical errors in the care process. There is also the evidence that the decline in the quality of patient care leads to a rise in mortality and morbidity rates among the hospitalized patients. Communities suffer from poor quality of care, increased safety issues, and disease burden among the population. Nursing shortage also increases costs incurred by healthcare organizations in hiring, training, and struggling to retain their staff. There is also the increased utilization of resources from prolonged hospitalizations for patients as well as the need for complex care. Therefore, health organizations, communities, patients, and healthcare providers suffer from the shortages of nurses in healthcare (Haryanto, 2019; Marć et al., 2019).
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Nursing shortage is a crucial problem that affects organizational performance. The effect can be seen from different statistics on the problem. For example, a study conducted in Australia showed that nursing shortage due to high turnover rate among nurses increases the rates of hospitalizations in their organizations (Zhao et al., 2019). Patients suffer directly from the high costs. The study also revealed that reducing the turnover rates by half and using mitigation strategies such as hiring additional staff on short-term basis could save $32 million for the hospitals (Zhao et al., 2019). Studies conducted in America also reveal similar statistics. For example, studies have demonstrated that the loss of a nurse leaving their position in an organization is associated with $11000 to $90000 costs to the organization (Kelly et al., 2021). There is also a loss of $8.5 million from wider costs such as patient deferment, unfilled vacancies, orientation, and training. The implementation of programs that address nurses’ needs as a way of increasing their retention rates have considerable cost benefits. For example, the implementation of the Resilience in Stressful Events Program in the research by Moran et al., (2020) showed that organizations had monetary savings of $22576.05 per nurse who benefited from the program. In addition, the study showed that the implementation of such programs could save US hospitals more than $1.81 million annually from increased retention among registered nurses.
The above financial risks associated with nursing shortage can be managed using a number of mitigation strategies. One of them is the implementation of nurse-centered interventions to meet their needs. Health organizations can prioritize the needs of the nurses, as a way of retaining them. For example, they can increase their renumeration rates, offer them training and support their aspirations in advancing their education, as a way of empowering them and retaining them. The nurse-centered interventions will motivate them, hence, their retention rates improving in an organization. The second mitigation strategy is redesigning the work environment. This includes adopting new technologies that will lessen the nurses’ workload in the provision of patient care. In addition, providing a better environment characterized by adequate nurses staffing, no bullying, and violence towards nurses will increase their job satisfaction, hence, lowering job abandonment among them. The last mitigation strategy is transforming culture in healthcare organizations. Accordingly, culture of safety should be supported as an indirect approach to retaining nurses. For example, nurse leaders should be the advocates of nurses to ensure that their needs are prioritized. The organizational culture must also change to accommodate the views of nurses on how the quality, safety, and efficiency of care can be improved (Shamsi & Peyravi, 2020). Through it, nurses will get a voice to express issues facing them and propose solutions, which if implemented will reduce the overall turnover rates among them.
The proposed solution entails focusing on empowering nurses to reduce their turnover rates, hence, nursing shortage. The proposed empowerment strategies include being highly focused on meeting the diverse needs of the nurses. Nurse leaders should be encouraged to listen and be responsive to the needs of the nurses. The management needs to prioritize the implementation of strategies that address the issues causing high turnover rates among them. They also need to collaborate with the leadership to transform workplace culture to ensure inclusivity and diversity in the nursing workforce. Health organizations also must be flexible in adjusting the existing protocols to align with the needs and expectations of the nurses. The benefits of the proposed solution includes increased work satisfaction among nurses, motivation, work engagement, and innovation, which lowers their intention to leave their jobs (Haddad et al., 2022). As a result, health organizations will maintain most of the nursing staff, hence, mitigating the financial implications of nursing shortages.
The proposed solution of empowering nurses to address nursing shortage is culturally sensitive. This can be seen from several instances. First, the solution aims at ensuring inclusivity and diversity in the nursing workforce. This focus will ensure cultural tolerance and use of culturally sensitive interventions in meeting nurses’ and patients’ needs in the organization. Secondly, the solution advocates the use of nurse-centered interventions that build the cultural competencies among nurses. For example, training opportunities will be offered to the nursing staff with the aim of increasing their cultural competencies. The training will also expand their understanding of ways of collaborating with individuals from different cultural backgrounds. The solution also aims at transforming the existing culture. The focus is on ensuring that the culture aligns with the expectations of not only the nurses but also other healthcare providers too (Moran et al., 2020). This focus is essential in ensuring sustainable change in the organization’s culture.
The proposed solution will be ethical. First, it will adopt evidence-based interventions for use in empowering nurses. The implementers of the solution will research the existing evidence to identify best empowerment practices that can optimize outcomes such as efficiency, quality, and safety in nursing. The empowerment strategies will also be associated with no harm to the nurses. The priority will be on ensuring that nurses enjoy optimal benefits from the adopted strategies while eliminating any potential harm. The best practices will also be incorporated into the existing organizational systems and processes to ensure their sustainability. Nurses will be actively involved in assessing, planning, implementing, and evaluating the different strategies to ensure their ownership and use of best strategies only in addressing the issue of nursing shortage.
The proposed solution is also promotes equitability. It will target all the nurses without considering their backgrounds, educational level, and experience. The solution will also benefit all nurses in healthcare organizations. Equitability will be achieved by ensuring that the solution is incorporated into human resource processes in the organization. Active participation of the nurses will be encouraged to ensure that the solution aligns with their expectations and needs. The solution will also be aligned with the existing organizational policies and guidelines on ensuring best practices in employee management (Moran et al., 2020).
References
Haddad, L. M., Annamaraju, P., & Toney-Butler, T. J. (2022). Nursing Shortage. In StatPearls. StatPearls Publishing. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493175/
Haryanto, M. (2019). Nursing Shortage: Myth or Fact? Orthopaedic Nursing, 38(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.1097/NOR.0000000000000535
Kelly, L. A., Gee, P. M., & Butler, R. J. (2021). Impact of nurse burnout on organizational and position turnover. Nursing Outlook, 69(1), 96–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2020.06.008
Marć, M., Bartosiewicz, A., Burzyńska, J., Chmiel, Z., & Januszewicz, P. (2019). A nursing shortage – a prospect of global and local policies. International Nursing Review, 66(1), 9–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/inr.12473
Moran, D., Wu, A. W., Connors, C., Chappidi, M. R., Sreedhara, S. K., Selter, J. H., & Padula, W. V. (2020). Cost-Benefit Analysis of a Support Program for Nursing Staff. Journal of Patient Safety, 16(4), e250. https://doi.org/10.1097/PTS.0000000000000376
Shamsi, A., & Peyravi, H. (2020). Nursing shortage, a different challenge in Iran: A systematic review. Medical Journal of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 34, 8. https://doi.org/10.34171/mjiri.34.8
Zhao, Y., Russell, D. J., Guthridge, S., Ramjan, M., Jones, M. P., Humphreys, J. S., & Wakerman, J. (2019). Costs and effects of higher turnover of nurses and Aboriginal health practitioners and higher use of short-term nurses in remote Australian primary care services: An observational cohort study. BMJ Open, 9(2), e023906. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-023906