Nursing Management - Essay Example

The paper tells that high turnover rates may lead to poor patient outcomes because the institution could loose employees who have gained some levels of expertise, familiarity with the work environment and patient trust. This has the potential of making the hospital to loose customers leading to reduce profit margins or reduced economies of scale. The institution also incurs expenses in the process of recruiting new staff. At times, the new workforce needs to be trained on certain skills that are important for quality patient outcomes. This means the higher the turn over rates, the higher the rate at which the institution incurs these expenses. Castle and Engberg explain that when the levels of absenteeism are high, the nurses who are available are forced to take mandatory overtime and this presents extra costs to the healthcare institution. This could also affect the efficiency of the available nurses because of working under strenuous conditions. Because of this, the healthcare institution may become limited in its capacity to handle normal number of patients. Absenteeism also leads to inconsistency in managing patient cases because teams handling patients have to be changed frequently and this may lead to poor patient outcomes and reduced trust by customers. In regard to patient privacy, nurses should consider the effects of breaching privacy on the patient such as withdrawal and lack of cooperation. There are also circumstances which require that nurses weigh the importance of revealing the patient information to some relevant information verses the risks of maintaining privacy. An example is where the parents of a youngsters have to be notified of their child’s condition so that they can support in paying for their treatment. If the youngster’s condition is serious and the parents are not notified, the patient could die. Nurses should also consider the relevance of the third parties for example insurance companies or employers paying for a patient’s medical bills have the right to access the patient’s medical records or else they might not pay. Others could include people who could be potentially harmed by the patient’s condition. In the case of married couples, nurses should not withhold the medical records of their partners from them. 3) Discuss the importance of policy, protocol and procedure manuals in hospital wards. In hospital wards, policies are important in justifying some of the interventions taken by nurses that the patients could question for example referral of all patients suspected to be victims of physical abuse or rape to the most appropriate external medical provider. They also spell out permission granted to nurses in regard to some emergency cases for example administration of epinephrine to a anaphylaxis patient without an order from registered nurse or physician. Protocols guide nurses on the right thing to do in regard to their various roles for example what to include when making orders for the treatment of a patient. These could include patient’s full names, frequency and route of administration, date and time ordered among others. Procedure manuals on the other hand ensure that right from reception, admission and henceforth, the correct medical examinations and procedures are conducted on all patients and they are given the right medications. 4) Define the term ‘skill mix’, and explain why ‘team nursing’ is ‘skill mix’. The term skill mix simply means a mix of staff in the workforce or the pooling of professionals from various fields to accomplish a given task. Roles and activities are demarcated among various categories of staff. Team nursing can be described as skill mix because it involves the working together of professionals ... Read More