Competing needs arise within any organization as employees seek to meet their targets and leaders seek to meet company goals. As a leader, successful management of these goals requires establishing priorities and allocating resources accordingly.
Within a healthcare setting, the needs of the workforce, resources, and patients are often in conflict. Mandatory overtime, implementation of staffing ratios, use of unlicensed assisting personnel, and employer reductions of education benefits are examples of practices that might lead to conflicting needs in practice.
Leaders can contribute to both the problem and the solution through policies, action, and inaction. In this Assignment, you will further develop the white paper you began work on in Module 1 by addressing competing needs within your organization.
To Prepare:
- Review the national healthcare issue/stressor you examined in your Assignment for Module 1, and review the analysis of the healthcare issue/stressor you selected.
- Identify and review two evidence-based scholarly resources that focus on proposed policies/practices to apply to your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
- Reflect on the feedback you received from your colleagues on your Discussion post regarding competing needs.
The Assignment (4-5 pages):
Developing Organizational Policies and Practices
Add a section to the paper you submitted in Module 1. The new section should address the following:
- Identify and describe at least two competing needs impacting your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
- Describe a relevant policy or practice in your organization that may influence your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
- Critique the policy for ethical considerations, and explain the policy’s strengths and challenges in promoting ethics.
- Recommend one or more policy or practice changes designed to balance the competing needs of resources, workers, and patients, while addressing any ethical shortcomings of the existing policies. Be specific and provide examples.
- Cite evidence that informs the healthcare issue/stressor and/or the policies, and provide two scholarly resources in support of your policy or practice recommendations.
Solution:
Developing Organizational Policies and Practices
One healthcare issue affecting the nursing profession is the shortage of registered nurses (RNs). In the U.S, the RN workforce is projected to grow by 7% (221,900), that is from 3 million RNs in 2019 to 3.3 million in 2029 ( American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), 2019). New 175,900 vacancies for RNs are expected per annum through 2029, mainly due to turnover rates, nurse retirements, baby boomers, etc. Different competing needs influence RN shortages. Discussed in this paper are the competing issues affecting RN shortage, the organizational policy that influences RN shortage, a critique of policy’s ethical consideration, and proposed healthcare policy for balancing the competing needs.
Competing Needs Influencing RN Shortage
The two competing needs that influence RN shortage are the need for the healthcare organization to deliver quality care at a low cost. However, in most cases, high quality of care is mostly related to high healthcare costs. Thus, it becomes difficult for the organization to deliver quality patient care without incurring many expenses. Maintaining an adequate number of RNs in a healthcare organization may be substantially costly but may positively influence the quality of care delivered (Abhicharttibutra, Kunaviktikul, Turale, Wichaikhum, & Srisuphan, 2017). The RN shortage may lead to the organization hiring fewer nurses to carry out nursing roles designed for more number of nurses. While this may save the organization the wages and rewards involved in having more nurses, it may increase the organization’s costs through an increase in nurse turnover and use of travel and temporary nurses, which is highly costly (Haddad & Toney-Butler, 2019). Some organizations may address the RN shortage by implementing mandatory overtime and increasing the workload for the existing nurses. This may ensure that the patients……Please click the icon below to purchase full answer at only $10