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Workplace safety for Nurses
workplace safety for Nurses.Since the dawn of time, there has always been a need for more workers or employees. Very rarely was there a time with little to no job openings. In recent years the healthcare field has become in desperate need of more employees, especially nurses. With the covid-19 pandemic stress, workplace burnout, and payment issues, hospital units are growing sparse. Units which were not up to staffing before the pandemic are working extremely understaffed now. Some of the shortages are due to high levels of RN retirements with not enough new nurses entering the workforce to take their place (Buerhaus, 2021). There are many other influencing factors “including working conditions, increased number of patients, violence in the healthcare system… difficulty retaining new graduate nurses, lack of seats in nursing programs, and a nursing faculty shortage” (Perkins, 2021, p. 50). There is also work that nursing working under the stress of the shortages will become burnt out and leave the profession (Perkins, 2021)
workplace safety for Nurses
Some hospitals in my area have been recently working under tight conditions and in some cases diverting patients to other hospitals with more staff and resources. I work in labor and delivery at my organization. At current, we have not had to divert obstetric patients, but that does not mean our ratios have been safe. Our unit is also very understaffed. With the specialty population of obstetrics, there is never a time when we know how many patients we will have on the unit. A woman can go into labor at any moment, which makes our staffing and assignments more difficult.
Throughout our organization, agency or travel nurses have been hired to assist with the ongoing needs. On our unit, we have opened up incentive and contract shifts for interested staff members. We are staffing our own unit with our experienced nurses, while providing extra incentive and shift pay. This solution has saved our unit budget from hiring agency nurses, while keeping the unit closed to just our experienced employees. Although this is a good solution, it should be used temporarily to prevent burnout of current employees. It remains in use and many employees have left the unit due to work-life balance, burnout, and increased salary elsewhere. Burnout and compassion fatigue have created a huge issue in the healthcare workplace (Trepanier et al., 2022). I hope our organizations, litigators, and peers fight for workplace safety and allow for our wonderful nursing profession to remain strong and make a huge comeback.