Financial Implications of Nurse Understaffing - Assignment Example

In recent years, the relationship between nurse understaffing and adverse events such as medical errors, poor patient outcomes, and burnout has attracted considerable interest among nurse practitioners and other medical stakeholders. Research is consistent that nurse understaffing has affected many countries globally due to factors such as cost-containment, commercialization of medical institutions, deterioration of job security, insufficient pay, and extended working hours (Basinska & Wilczek-Ruzyczka, 2013; Kiekkas et al., 2008). On her part, Sanford (2010) acknowledges that the problem of nurse understaffing is exacerbated by health institutions that fail to hire new nurses in order to significantly reduce nursing labor costs.

While this may be the case, the concerned institutions fail to quantify the adverse financial implications related to nursing understaffing.  Bae (2012) acknowledges that understaffing leads to a heavy workload for nurses, which in turn triggers an increase in medical errors, patient mortality, falls with injuries, as well as nosocomial infections. In a leading editorial, Kiekkas (2013) notes that the problem of nurse understaffing is to be blamed for an increase in infection risk among nurses working in intensive care unit (ICU) settings.

Such nurses, according to the author, are exposed to infections such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, pneumonia, septicemia, and other central line-associated bloodstream infections. Nurse understaffing has been found to lead to burnout among nursing professionals, which in turn causes nurse dissatisfaction and turnover intentions (Shoorideh, Asktorab, Yaghmaei, & Majd, 2015). Indeed, these authors argue that burnout outcomes related to nursing understaffing “are dangerous not only for the person who experiences it but also for others, such as care recipients, colleagues, and family members” (p. 66). Research has also proved that perpetuating the trend of nurse understaffing in order to reduce nursing labor costs has a negative connotation in terms of significantly increasing the number of patient adverse events as well as longer lengths of hospital stay (Sanford, 2010).