Short Staffing In Nursing Care

While most people consider nursing to be extremely rewarding for both the patient and the nurse, when regarding the impact both will have on each other 's lives, very few people truly understand the pressures nurses deal with on a daily basis. A large portion of this stress is due to the nature of work that comes with the job, such as mandatory overtime and labor intensive work, a majority of the stress is induced by health care system 's tendency to be understaffed. Being understaffed simply means that the hospital does not have enough employees hired or working to meet the needs of the current patient count. Due to the short staffing, nurses are required to take on more patients that they can handle, for example, in a sample of 168 Pennsylvania …show more content…
This large, uneven patient-to-nurse ratio has greatly impacted the quality of life for both the patient and nurse. In order to better the quality of life of nurses and patients within hospitals and other health care systems the infrastructure within the workplaces needs to be adjusted. Although there is a massive list of factors that have influenced the short staffing in hospitals, the factors that have most influenced it are: less people working in the field, the heightened amount of patients in hospitals, low economic funding, and the aging nursing staff. While nursing has become one of the most popular majors for college students, (Stockwell) "nursing schools across the country are struggling to expand capacity to meet the rising demand for care given the national move toward health care reform," (American Association of College of Nursing). In other words, colleges and universities are unable to keep up with the vast amount of students wanting to go into nursing, because of this nursing programs …show more content…
Short staffing has become an increasingly large problem in the health care field since it is now leading to a poorer quality of life for patients in hospitals and other forms of health care due to the poorer quality of life unhappy and overworked nurses are experiencing. In order to fix this problem hospitals need to supply a positive leadership team in order to better motivate workers and help them work through the stress and long hours. While there are certain measures hospitals can take to help better the quality of life for the nurses and patients when it comes to the short staffing, perhaps one of the most important things patient families and others can do is be respectful toward the hard working nurses to help them help