Running head: WORKLOAD NATIONAL HEALTHCARE ISSUE DISCUSSION 1
WORKLOAD NATIONAL HEALTHCARE ISSUE DISCUSSION 5
Title:
Student’s name:
Professor’s name:
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In this Discussion, you examine a national healthcare issue and consider how that issue may impact your work setting. You also analyze how your organization has responded to this issue.
To Prepare:
Review the Resources and select one current national healthcare issue/stressor to focus on. Reflect on the current national healthcare issue/stressor you selected and think about how this issue/stressor may be addressed in your work setting.
By Day 3 of Week 1
Post a description of the national healthcare issue/stressor you selected for analysis, and explain how the healthcare issue/stressor may impact your work setting. Then, describe how your health system work setting has responded to the healthcare issue/stressor, including a description of what changes may have been implemented. Be specific and provide examples.
There are different issues which are in the healthcare sector at the national level whereby these issues are noted to be limiting the access to quality healthcare services that are being offered to the different patients and communities in need of these healthcare services. One of these issues to be taken into consideration for this case discussion is the heavy workload for the employees which translates into having a low number of healthcare professionals thus increasing the workload amounts to the employees within the healthcare sector (Holtz, 2020). This has been a recurrent issue over the decades whereby having an inadequate number of professional employees in the healthcare sector is noted to increase the workloads and the attendance which nurses would have to make to the different patients within the healthcare facilities, contributing to overworking and overtimes relating plans being introduced to ensure that healthcare services continue to be provided to the patients. This issue was most prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic period whereby there was an urgent need for more healthcare professionals in the healthcare facilities which wants much achievable to a hundred percent which translates into the overworking of the employees in these healthcare facilities (Huston, 2017).
One should understand that the ratio of staff to the patients should be within figures that are manageable and have logic as this will help on limiting the workloads given to the healthcare professionals. Also, one should understand that the inadequate number of employees within the healthcare sectors such as nurses and doctors is a very critical factor which was evident during the COVID-19 pandemic as there was an insufficient number of healthcare professionals something which contributed to having the healthcare working doubling and even tripling their efforts in trying to contain the pandemic and offer healthcare services to patients. This lead into having work fatigue and even a stressful working atmosphere due to the fact of having overworking of the healthcare professionals (Park, 2018).
The challenges which would result from having heavy workloads in a healthcare setting for the healthcare workers include, having a higher risk of medication errors which might result from confusion in handling different patients at the same time due to workloads. Also, there is a risk of the poor patient recorded keeping which would result in wrong medication errors, an increased number of complaints from communities and patients resulting from the same, higher rate of patient infections, abuses in the workplaces due to delays, and a higher rate of patients falls and many more. However, several solutions would be applied to deal with the issues relating to higher workloads whereby some of the strategies which would be applied to deal with the issue include, having adequate staffing being applied in an organization whereby which will help in settling on all the issues which might arise relating to worker’s shortages. Also, there should be introduced motivation to the employees such as considerable salaries and remunerations, being given off-periods, working on shifts as per the time schedules, provision of conducive working environments, and many more (Huston, 2017).
The work setting would be able to respond to the issue that I have raised by having different measures and strategies being employed such as accepting to absorb more employees of the healthcare facility who would help on having the different activities being achieved successfully based on the roles they have accepted to perform. Having these factors under consideration would help on having more workload dealt with and solved, and there will be also the proper rationing of the staff in an organization based on the workloads which are there. Enough staffing would help on having a proper rotation of the staffs such as on basis of night and day shifts, help on proper planning and duties allocation which would allow one to have the rest time being available for the employees and staffs, and also play a positive role in having a conducive working environment (Holtz, 2020).
References
Holtz, C. (2020). Global healthcare: Issues and policies. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Huston, C. J. (2017). Professional issues in nursing: Challenges and opportunities. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Park, K. A. (2018). Relationships between job satisfaction, work engagement, and turnover intention of health science teachers.