Skilled Nurse Ratio Analysis

The primary goal of skilled nursing facilities is to enhance the provision of quality care to patients and the elderly in various parts of the country. It is important that these facilities have enough nurses to provide this type of care. Many units lack sufficient nurses to provide quality care. The low number of nurses has led to several issues in the health sector such as increased number of patient falls and contracting central line infections, increased hiring cost of temporary nurses, and poor provision of nursing services. However, it is easy to deal with these issues when hospitals and nursing facilities increase their number of nurses. Because of this, this paper seeks to analyze the benefits of increasing RN staffing ratios in skilled

Primarily, the work of a nurse is to provide patient care. It is important for a health facility to have the right number of nurses for it to provide sufficient and quality care to its patients. As such, many states saw the need to improve the population of nurses in nursing homes as well as hospitals in their area. As such, the state of California was the first in implementing the nurse-to-patient ratios policy in the year 2004. The primary aim of this policy was to improve nurse retention, and the quality of care patients receive. Upon implementation of this policy, surveys have shown that nurse retention and patient care have improved in most of the nursing facilities (Aiken et al., 2010). The study found nurses in states with no nurse-to-patient ratio policies burn out more as compared to nurses in California (Aiken et al., 2010). Also, the studies established that more nurses, as compared to California RNs, complained of dissatisfaction. For instance, Aiken et al.’s study (2010) found that 34% of RNs in New Jersey complained of burnout as compared to 29% of RNs in California where there was a nurse-to-patient ratio policy and 26% of nurses in New Jersey and Pennsylvania were dissatisfied with their jobs while only 20% of nurses in California were dissatisfied with their job. Nurses in California reported that patient

Nursing is a demanding career that needs one’s full attention for a successful job. However, the pressure and demand that comes with the jobs makes some consider having their work as part-time or seeking alternative jobs. In a study conducted in the year 2011, 45% of nurses stated they were planning on finding other careers by the year 2015 (Hunt, 2009). More than 30% of nurses interviewed admitted they were planning to switch to others careers (Hunt, 2009). The American Association of Colleges of Nurses (AACN) states that RNs’ per-hour cost stands at $2,800. Several other surveys put the overall turnover cost of RNs at approximately $65,000. According to Hunt (2009), hospitals lose approximately $300,000 annually as a result of high nurse turnover. Apart from enforcing compulsory overtime, employers utilize temporary nurses to fill spaces left by quitting nurses. There are high concentrations of temporary nurses in hospitals and nursing facilities with poor staffing rates and inadequate supply of resources. Studies have shown that temporary nurses make between 5-15% of skilled nursing staffs in more than 50% of hospitals and care units in the United States (Aiken et al., 2007). Studies have shown that temporary nurses are expensive as health units have to spend an average of $32,000 on temporary nurses (Every, 2008). In her study, Every (2008) also found out that