Nursing staffing matrix implementation to improve nurse retention and patient safety

¶ … nursing staffing is very critical to patient well-being and safety. However, inadequate nurse staffing can influence the medication errors, rates of heart attacks, and respiration infections, which can consequently lead to mortality rates. In other words, a nurse workload can lead to 7% risk of patient's death, and increase of staff workload can reduce nurses' morale, staff turnover and absenteeism. In the United States, nurse staffing has become a major concern for the quality of care and patient safety, and a lower staff rates can have adverse effect on patients' outcomes, which consequently lower staff satisfaction.

Objective of this paper is to propose a nursing matrix turnover that will be employed to improve the nurse satisfaction, nurse retention, and nurse turnover.

Methods

The proposal uses different methods to identify the strategy that will be employed for the new staffing matrix to improve the hourly rounds to reduce patients' falls, call light use, pressure ulcers, which will consequently enhance nurse and patients' satisfactions within the healthcare environment. (Al-Abri, & Amina Al-Balushi 2014).

The survey will collect data on the:

Staff attitudes and their contributions to job satisfaction or dissatisfaction before and after initiating the changes.

turnover rates before or after the initiating of change.

Compare patient's discharge surveys before the change initiation and after the change's initiation.

First, the study will use the survey method to collect data on staff attitudes that can contribute to the job satisfaction or dissatisfaction before or after initiating a change. A survey research refers to the collection of information or data from sample individuals. The proposal will use the survey to collect data because it is an effective and efficient strategy to collect data from a broad spectrum of staff nurses. One of the benefits of survey method in carrying out the evaluation plan is that it can assist in enhancing a greater understanding the reason for job satisfaction or dissatisfaction among nursing staff for hourly rounds to reduce falls and call light use.

The paper will use the 5 Likert survey scale to collect data from the sample population. One of the benefits of the Likert scale is that it is the universal technique for a data collection. Moreover, the response can be easily quantified by the researcher, and assists in enhancing the graphic presentations. More importantly, the Likert scale assists participants to respond with a degree of agreement. Additionally, the likert scaling is efficient, quick and inexpensive strategy to collect data.

The format of 5-level Likert scale includes:

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neither agree nor disagree

Agree

Strongly agree

The numerical value is assigned to each scale to assist in the quantification of the results as being revealed below:

(1)Strongly disagree, (2) Disagree, (3) Neither agree nor disagree, (4) Agree, (5) Strongly agree. The scale will assist in the quantification of the results, and the format will assist in presenting the results in percentages and graphical format.

Variables

The variables that will be used to evaluate the project outcomes are as follows:

1. Staff Perceptions and attitudes.

2. Patients perceptions and attitudes

3. Rate of nursing turnover.

The variable is anything that the researcher intends to measure. Staff perception and attitudes about the hourly nursing rounding are very critical to design the new staffing matrix. The strategy will assist the healthcare management to design an appropriate nursing staff to reduce staff turnover, improve the staff satisfaction, which will consequently assist in enhancing the overall healthcare delivery. The study will also measure patients' perception about the nursing rounding because the variable will assist in enhancing a greater understanding how the nursing rounding assist in reducing patients falls, and pressure ulcers.

Strategy to Educate the Project Participants

Different strategies will be used to educate the project participants. First, the study will use both the PowerPoint slides and other teaching materials to educate the project participants. PowerPoint presentations are the effective tool for the instructional setting geared towards the skill development and information exchanges. Typically, PowerPoint is a powerful tool to aid learning, and the benefits of PowerPoint presentation is that it assists in presenting the training materials using the graphic illustrations. The proposal will use both texts and images to educate the participants, and integrating the visual images with words to assist the participants to understand the training instructions.

The training strategy will consist of formal education that involves a formal teaching of all the relevant heath concepts such as hourly rounding, and its effect on staff satisfactions and patients' satisfactions. The case study will also be used as the teaching materials to make the participants understand the real life situation of the staff attitude and patients' attitudes towards the nursing rounding. The survey and questionnaire will also serve as teaching materials to assist the participants to understand how they can be used to collect data for a future research.

Disseminating Evidence

Different strategy will be used to disseminate the project results to the stakeholders. Firsts, the researcher will use memo to disseminate the project evidences to the key stakeholders such as the management of the organizations. The memo will discuss the appropriate benefits that their organizations will derive from the project. The study will also target the policy recommendations and key results at the professional and scholarly associations.

"The paper also suggests the publishing policy papers presenting the results from the research undertaken in a format tailored towards relevant European policy makers and open access practitioners.." (Wyatt, Finn, Wadhwa, et al. 2013 p 15).

The study will also use the newsletters, and press release to create public awareness about the project. More importantly, the journal articles, policy papers, and reports will be used to disseminate the information to the public. "The policy papers will be distributed in hard copy at various events and published in electronic form on the project website." (Wyatt, Finn, Wadhwa, et al. 2013 p 15).

Finally, the study suggests creating the website to disseminate the information to the public. The conference presentations and websites are the effective ways to promote the project outcomes. (Wyatt, Finn, Wadhwa, et al., 2013).

Reference

Al-Abri, R. & Amina Al-Balushi, A. (2014). Patient Survey Satisfaction as the Tool for the Quality Improvement. Oman Med J. 29(1): 3-7.

Wyatt, S. Finn, R.Wadhwa, K. et al. (2013). Policy Recommendations for the Open access to the research Data in Europe. RECODE.