The Nursing Shortage and the Quality of Patient Care - Annotated Bibliography Example

NURSING SHORTAGE AND QUALITY OF PATIENT CARE Introduction The shortage of nurses has been a major threat to every society as a whole. Many researchers have tried to find out if this shortage of nurses in hospitals and health centers affects the quality of patient care. It is said that nurse staffing has a lot of impact in hospitals and other health centers as it enhances the quality of patient care. The financial matters and the need of local nurses are factors that affect the staffing levels that have been set by administrators in hospitals.

The nature of the hospital environment which includes the overall substantial environment, information and communication systems, cooperation and support services are also factors that affect the amount of time used by nurses thus affecting the value of the care of patients.Annotation 1Fox, R., & Abrahamson, K. (2009). A critical examination of the U.S. nursing shortage: contributing factors, public policy implications. Nursing Forum, 44(4), 235-244. This research project was carried out to clarify the factors that influence the current nursing shortage together with possible solutions to curb the shortage.

It tries to reveal the influence of social factors and the government policy to the problem of nurse shortages in hospitals and other health centers. The effects of arguments both in agreement and in disagreement with policy intervention on the overall provision of nursing services were scrutinized. It was found out that increase in the number of nurses available would not solve the problem if there is no policy intervention to put the financial value on the quality of care provided by nurses.

The strength of this study is that it explored and revealed that nursing care requires the government’s supervision since it is in conjunction with the aim of saving life. The project further examined factors that influence nursing supply and demand which include legislation passage, educational assistance and the setting up of minimum staffing needs and quality standards for repayment.The major weakness of this project is that it does not point out educational factors that influence the shortage of nurses since researchers have found out that not many people want to be in the nursing profession and would rather study other carriers.

Nurses have been observed to be overworked thus pushing young people away from the dreams of being future nurses.This project is highly applicable to nursing practice as it is seen that weighty considerations that should be factored out in policy creation include compensation for quality care, the employment efforts of other nurses and the multifaceted nature of the nursing profession. Annotation 2Johnson, J., Billingsley, M., & Costa, L. (2006). Extreme nursing and the nursing shortage. Nursing Outlook, 54(5), 294-299.

This project reviews the shortage of nurses and implies strategies that have to be implemented so as to ensure that the nursing profession does its best to offering quality patient care and comfort. It is seen that the nursing shortage has a lot of impact in the offering of quality care for patients at present and also in the future. The extreme nursing is a period in which we are entering into, where there is an imbalance between the demand for nurses and the supply of nurses.This research project has well brought out the extreme shortage of nurses and its impacts to the future.

It aims to enlighten the nation about the problem so that respective measures can be taken to ensure the quality of patient care in hospitals and other health centers both now and in the future. It has succeeded to offer new, bold and realistic strategies which when followed will bring a lot of change to the nursing carrier.The project has not been keen to give the description and characteristics of the extreme nursing period that we are entering into. There is no certainty of when this extreme period is going to occur or whether it has already occurred.

It has also not touched on how the present quality of care of patients should be improved but has dwelt so much on the future.This project is not applicable in the present nursing practice as it gives strategies that will help improve the future quality of patient care. It does not say what must be done as at now to improve the present state.Annotation 3Goldfarb, M., Goldfarb, R., & Long, M. (2008). Making sense of competing nursing shortage concepts. Policy, Politics & Nursing Practice, 9(3), 192-202.

The project explains the nursing shortage using hospital administrators, government policy makers’ and economists’ concepts. It purposes to clarify the problem of the nursing shortage using different philosophies of shortages. It talks about problems and gives ideas on possible improvement of the supply of nurses as it gives different strategy suggestions of competing shortage concepts.This research has succeeded in elaborating the nurse shortage in a diversity of ways, using different concepts and thus making the problem to be understood better.

The divergent policy implications of completing the shortage are well framed out and are extremely realistic.The research is time consuming as concepts used by different professions have to be found out and brought out so as to clarify the meaning of shortage. The researcher had to look for the meaning of shortage from a variety of participants of which most of them were not related to the nursing shortage. Some of the implications of competing shortage are not relevant to the shortage of nursing and the quality of patient care.

The research is not applicable to the improvement of the quality of patient care as it only dwells on the shortage of nurses. It does not touch on how the shortage of nurses affects the patient care in hospitals.Annotation 4Shipman, D., & Hooten, J. (2008). Without enough nurse educators there will be a continual decline in RNs and the quality of nursing care: contending with the faculty shortage. Nurse Education Today, 28(5), 521-523.The intention of this study is to study the effects of not having enough nurse educators to the future nursing generation and on the quality of patient care.

It has been noted that the number of nursing educators is gradually decreasing as the years go by thus threatening the nursing profession. There are comparably fewer educators in nursing institutions thus affecting the number of students who are willing to study nursing since the ratio of the educator to students should be maintained reasonable.It has been debated that the lesser the nurse educators, the greater the future problem of the nursing shortage and the poorer quality of patient care.

The research has also succeeded in pointing out that due to the decrease of the educators, the registered nurses will not have quality skills hence affecting their services to their patients.The project has not concentrated in outlining the factors that lead to a reduction in the number of nurse educators. There is also no certainty whether the number of nurse educators will decrease in the future. Little attention has been paid to the strategies that can help prevent the absence of nurse educators, as this is the key factor that leads to the continual decline in RNs and the quality of nursing care.

This research has applicability to nursing practice as the quality of nursing skills and education fully depends on the availability of nurse educators in conjunction to quality learning experience.Annotation 5Oulton, J. (2006). The global nursing shortage: an overview of issues and actions. Policy, Politics & Nursing Practice, 7(3), 34S-39. This research project gives a general outline of the global nursing shortage providing perspectives of the international Council of nurses and discusses what should be done on the subject of the nursing shortage.

It is said that nurse staffing has a lot of impact in hospitals and other health centers as it enhances the quality of patient care. The financial matters and the need of local nurses are factors that affect the staffing levels that have been set by administrators in hospitals. The nature of the hospital environment which includes the overall substantial environment, information and communication systems, cooperation and support services are also factors that affect the amount of time used by nurses thus affecting the value of the care of patients.

The research does not touch only one nation but investigates the problem of the nursing shortage globally. The research has helped to find out that low levels of nurse staffing lead to negative results in the nurse jobs and high levels of unpleasant patient events which include sudden deaths and many complications. It has also been easy to prove that apart from staffing levels, other factors that affect the patient safety in hospitals and other health care organizations include the attitude and the characteristics of the individual nurse and the cooperation of patients with the staff in the centre.

It has been difficult for the research to find out the parameters of staffing that can be specified so as to ensure patient safety. This is because it is the up-most managers and nurse executives that decide on the numbers of nurses per unit in the area. It has also been difficult to know which nursing procedures should be removed or can be determined as not safe in considering patient safety and care.This research is applicable to nursing practice as it is seen that the higher the number of nurses the higher the quality of patient safety.

Though there are some cases where it is not applicable, in that the number of nurses in a centre is large but the patients are neither safe nor comfortable.SummaryThe nursing shortage is a global problem and it is high time action should be taken so as to improve the quality of patient care and safety internationally, to ensure healthy, reliable and safe hospitals and medical centers throughout. The future fully depends on the strategies and implementations that are made today.ReferencesFox, R.

, & Abrahamson, K. (2009). A critical examination of the U.S. nursing shortage: contributing factors, public policy implications. Nursing Forum, 44(4), 235-244.Goldfarb, M., Goldfarb, R., & Long, M. (2008). Making sense of competing nursing shortage concepts. Policy, Politics & Nursing Practice, 9(3), 192-202.Johnson, J., Billingsley, M., & Costa, L. (2006). Xtreme nursing and the nursing shortage. Nursing Outlook, 54(5), 294-299.Oulton, J. (2006). The global nursing shortage: an overview of issues and actions.

Policy, Politics & Nursing Practice, 7(3), 34S-39. Shipman, D., & Hooten, J. (2008). Without enough nurse educators there will be a continual decline in RNs and the quality of nursing care: contending with the faculty shortage. Nurse Education Today, 28(5), 521-523.