Healthcare staffing continues to be a problem for many hospitals. Practices find it difficult to fill up open positions, with many taking months before they find the right fit. With high vacancies, many care teams face challenges in delivering safe patient care. Even with an efficient surgery schedule and lean programs, the challenges are coming to a point where staff barely have enough time to make their way to the cafeteria for a snack, much less to eat meals.
Profitability and Safety Risk
With vacancies for staff positions like nursing jobs in Phoenix growing, it’s clear that something needs to be changed. Otherwise, maintaining the status quo will only hurt profitability while increasing the safety risks for patients. With understaffed teams, patients don’t receive the care and attention they need and deserve. Mistakes are much more likely to happen as well, which is a common factor in medical malpractice cases.
Staffing Ratios Can Help
Putting mandatory limits on the number of patients assigned to a nurse, though, can significantly improve patient care levels. By imposing safe patient limits for nurses will result in less stressful workplace conditions for nurses. This can increase the number of applicants who may want to pursue nursing careers in Phoenix and other states in the US.
Positive Patient Outcomes
The idea is simple. By limiting the number of patients that each nurse handles, nurses aren’t stressed out and burned out. That’s going to encourage better retention rates in many hospitals and can improve hiring success. It can also result in positive patient outcomes. With nurses well able to handle their patient loads, they’re much more likely to provide high levels of care. With higher nursing satisfaction, more and more patients stand to benefit, as a result.
Strong Opposition
A lot of hospital officials are against staffing ratios, though, with many saying the move will only lead to layoffs. Others agree that it can serve patients better while reducing the amount of stress for nurses. One option to afford mandatory staffing ratios would be to cut down on excessive administrative salaries, a move that doesn’t seem to be popular with hospital leaders, with some saying enforced minimum staffing will hamstring hospital officials.
Fulfilling the Gap
For many hospitals, though, counting on the help of recruitment firms is one way to answer the demand. To fill up open positions for nursing jobs in Phoenix, companies rely on firms like Concentric Healthcare Staffing to provide staffing solutions.
