Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Understaffing: A Life or Death Problem

The notion that there is a relationship between nurse and patient satisfaction makes sense. As a nurse, you work longer shifts than just about any other professional on the planet. If you work a long shift in poor conditions with entirely too many patients, you’re more likely to make a mistake. And really, who could blame you? Burnout and exhaustion are both very real problems for nurses.
Tired Nurses Result in Lower Patient Satisfaction
The first things to go when anyone becomes overly tired include patience and compassion. A study sponsored by the National Institute of Nursing Research concluded that patient dissatisfaction is highest when nurses work more than 13 hours in a single shift. Unfortunately, understaffing is a common issue in medical institutions. So, it’s common for your employer to ask you to work double shifts. Statistics even show that a nurse working over 10 hours is nearly three times more likely to dissatisfy their patients than a nurse who works an eight-hour shift.
Understaffing: A Life or Death Problem
An unhappy patient or two because an exhausted nurse working a double shift wasn’t gushing with rainbows and sunshine is hardly the end of the world. Unfortunately, understaffing and overworked nursing staffs is a much deeper problem with more serious results. According to research from the University of Pennsylvania, it is a life or death problem.

4 Easy Travel Nursing Tips That Any Nurse Can Use


Stay Healthy & Safe on the Go with These Travel Tips

Working as a nurse can be draining, so if you’re also traveling for work, you need to take some extra precautions to make sure that you don’t wear yourself down physically or financially. As exciting as helping people in another place can be, traveling as a nurse can get the better of you unless you’re taking proper care of yourself. If you’re on the road, you need to plan ahead, come up with a budget, and make sure you have what you need to stay healthy on the job.

A Major Turning Point for Mindfulness in Health Care


Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, comments on the first medical school division dedicated to studying the impact of meditation.

When I started at the UMass Medical Center in 1976, the idea that one day there would be a Division of Mindfulness within the Department of Medicine was virtually inconceivable. That it has come about is diagnostic of a new and increasingly widespread recognition of the deep potential synergies between the domains of medicine and meditation (the words themselves are obviously linked at the etymological hip) as well as recognition of the challenges involved in maintaining and optimizing human well-being and health across the lifespan.

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