[Answered]: Patient Safety Any nurse will emphasize that…

Patient Safety Any nurse will emphasize that safety is our top priority. Safety for patients and for the nurses caring for them is equally as important. Evidence demonstrates a direct relationship between increased workload and job dissatisfaction as a result of high patient-nurse ratios. Unbalanced workloads and inadequate staff compromise patient safety, increasing medical error prevalence and the deterioration of nurses physical and mental health, leading to burnout and more nurses leaving the profession (Gil et al., 2022). Therefore, we can conclude that fixing nurse-to-patient ratios in all healthcare facilities is of utmost importance if we want to retain the nursing workforce and improve the quality of care we provide patients. A nurse’s role is vast, with endless tasks that need to be completed during allotted time constraints. Phillips et al. (2019) remind us that to ensure patient safety, a nurse must be very vigilant at the bedside to properly monitor and identify patient clinical deterioration changes. Uchmanowicz et al. (2023) performed a systematic review and concluded that there is an inverse relationship between the rationing of nursing care (RONC) and patient safety. More specifically, the more time a nurse is unable to provide necessary care to patients (due to poor staffing, time, and skills), the higher the incidence of medication errors, falls, pressure injuries, hospital-acquired infections, and readmission risks there are. Additionally, Phillips et al. (2019) also add that omission of care, which is when the right nursing action is missed, delayed, or absent altogether, leads to job dissatisfaction, absenteeism, increased hospital length of stay, and failure to rescue. In 2017, a hospital admitted Josh Saeta, a Los Angeles resident, due to abdominal pain. Several hours post admission, his health started to decline, experiencing stroke-like symptoms and possible sepsis presentation. The family reported that they were unable to locate a nurse to assess the patient, leading to his eventual cardiac arrest and permanent incapacitation. The family has since filed a lawsuit on the basis of inadequate staffing (Hwang, 2024). Ensuring safe nurse-to-patient ratios for hospitals is a dire necessity, as there are countless similar cases nationwide that experience such neglect. These individuals are not just “cases”; they are victims in our community healthcare settings in Texas, affected by the trickle effect of inadequate staffing and oversight. Families are dealing with the added emotional, psychological, and financial repercussions of these preventable events many years after they happen. Although this catastrophic event for Mr. Saeta occurred in California where mandatory staffing ratios currently exist, it shows us that the implementation of staffing laws is not impactful on its own. The oversight and enforcement of compliance by committees like the HHSC is equally as important to prevent sentinel events. A case like Mr. Saeta’s also demonstrates the urgency and support required from congress to not only implement safe ratio staffing laws but also to ensure that consequences are enforced on all non-abiding parties resistant to make patient safety a priority. Mental Health Effects A direct relationship has been discovered by Garnett et al. (2023) between inadequate staffing and the negative effects it has on healthcare providers psychological health and poor patient outcomes. It is noted in the study that a patient’s health can worsen when nurses care for patients under these high-stress conditions. Compassion fatigue is defined as twofold, one being extended exposure in caring for critically ill patients. Inadequate staffing exposes nurses to the suffering of others for an extended period of time as the nurse is unable to acquire the proper time off for decompression, and this contributes to work overload and intolerance. Other psychological conditions such as anxiety, depression, and insomnia can arise among nurses. Alharbi et al. (2019) evaluate research on factors affecting compassion fatigue (CF) among nurses and conclude that workload and staffing are negative contributors to the psychological well-being of nurses, causing compassion fatigue. Nurses are expected to make critical decisions regarding the care of their patients; a sound mind is needed for such decisions. summary