NHS FPX 4000 Assessment 4 Analyzing a Current Health Care Problem or Issue

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Capella university

NHS FPX 4000 Developing a Health Care Perspective

Prof. Name

Date

Analyzing a Current Health Care Problem or Issue

Staffing shortages in healthcare have emerged as a pressing issue, significantly impacting patient outcomes, workforce morale, and organizational efficiency. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these challenges, highlighting the need for sustainable solutions (Peters, 2023). This analysis examines the issue of staffing shortages and potential solutions to address the problem. The paper also explores the ethical implications of the solutions, emphasizing the principles of beneficence, justice, and nonmaleficence in ensuring equitable and safe patient care.

Elements of the Problem/issue

Healthcare staff shortages are a significant problem that challenges the quality of patient care, staff’s quality of work and life, and organizational viability. These shortages are caused by many factors, including an aging workforce, more patients, workload, and burnout (Tamata & Mohammadnezhad, 2022). The World Health Organization (WHO) approximates that the world lacks slightly over seven million healthcare workers who deliver priority essential health services. In addition, the need for nurses is projected to increase to 13 million in 2035 (Tamata & Mohammadnezhad, 2022).

This issue illustrates high acuity areas like the ICU, where nurses’ shortages depend on high patient mortality rates, create more work for employees, and reduce their satisfaction. This results in a decline in the quality of patient care with longer treatment times, increased error rates, and worse results. These shortages burden healthcare delivery entities, limit the delivery of services, and compromise safety, thereby jeopardizing public health and overall care organization (Naseem et al., 2024).

Therefore, its effective solution requires comprehensive and successful strategies. The selected information reveals factors that have led to a shortage of healthcare staff. These revelations help to demystify the problem, including structural forces that burden healthcare organizations and the resulting impacts on patient outcomes and staff burnout. The WHO data show that the issue is global and affects patients’ rights and access to services. In identifying how shortages affect staff and patients, the evidence supports how staff and patients are keen on digital healthcare solutions to address these issues.

Analyze the Problem or Issue

Staffing shortages mean insufficient qualified workers to meet the need for patient care services (Džakula et al., 2022). These shortages on medical-surgical floors are chronic problems that threaten safe, high-quality patient care, contribute to staff burnout, and challenge our healthcare organizations. This problem is common in busy hospitals with a high turnover of patients and few numbers of nurses to attend to these patients. On these floors, employees are forced to work by priorities, rely on cooperation, and be inventive to ensure safety and quality. 

This is a topic of personal interest because I have seen it at work and have personally experienced it. Small numbers of staff mean that staff must constantly prioritize, leading to patient care issues and patient and staff dissatisfaction. All these challenges highlight the importance of developing staff development and resilience as key organizational factors. The problem is relevant to many participants: nurses, patients, and managers of healthcare institutions. The roles of nurses are extended, accompanied by job dissatisfaction and burnout, and affect patient care by having longer waiting times, reduced quality, and adverse outcomes (Naseem et al., 2024). Administrators require assistance with costs incurred while recruiting temporary employees or dealing with high attrition.

Considering Options and Solutions 

Addressing healthcare staffing shortages requires comprehensive solutions, including recruitment strategies, retention programs, and investment in staff well-being. Recruitment efforts could include loan forgiveness programs and scholarships to attract new professionals, particularly in underserved areas (NAMI, n.d.). Retention strategies, such as competitive wages, flexible scheduling, incentivization, and a supportive environment, can improve job satisfaction and reduce turnover.

Moreover, building staff resilience through mental health support, team-building initiatives, and wellness programs is essential to combat burnout and foster long-term workforce stability (Young, 2022). Implementing these solutions would require financial investment, organizational commitment, and policy support. Additionally, healthcare facilities must establish effective leadership to create supportive work environments and allocate resources for ongoing training and development.

Proposed Solution

Enhancing retention through competitive wages and flexible scheduling is a practical and sustainable solution to address healthcare staffing shortages. Competitive wages recognize the critical contributions of healthcare providers, ensuring they feel valued and fairly compensated. Research indicates that higher wages correlate with improved job satisfaction and retention rates (Young, 2022). Additionally, flexible scheduling allows staff to balance work and personal responsibilities better, reducing burnout and promoting overall well-being. This approach can also attract younger professionals seeking workplaces that support modern work-life balance needs.

Despite its advantages, implementing this solution requires substantial financial investment. Healthcare organizations may need to reallocate budgets or seek external funding to sustain competitive compensation structures. Additionally, workforce redistribution may be necessary to ensure equitable staffing across departments, which could temporarily disrupt workflows in some areas.

Nevertheless, the long-term benefits outweigh these challenges. Retaining experienced staff reduces reliance on costly temporary or travel nurses and decreases recruitment expenses associated with high turnover rates. Furthermore, a stable workforce enhances continuity of care, leading to better patient outcomes and satisfaction (Džakula et al., 2022). By prioritizing competitive wages and flexible scheduling, healthcare organizations address staffing shortages and create an environment where providers feel supported, valued, and empowered to deliver high-quality care.

Consequences of Ignoring the Issue 

It would be disastrous to ignore the staffing shortages issue. The patients would suffer longer waiting times for care, increased errors, and negative health outcomes. Providers in the healthcare sector would remain stretched to the limit and possibly more burnt out, which would increase turnover and worsen the shortage (Tamata & Mohammadnezhad, 2022). This would erode the public’s confidence in healthcare systems and increase costs related to temporary human assets and mishaps. Ignoring staffing shortages would also strain healthcare organizations immensely, leading to increased financial burdens from hiring temporary staff or using agency nurses.

These temporary solutions often come at a higher cost and fail to address the root cause of the problem (Griffiths et al., 2021). Over a period, this will lead to employees’ low morale levels, hence increased cases of absenteeism and even higher turnover rates. If the workloads of the remainder of the staff went up, the cycle of burnout and turnover would continue and, inevitably, lower the general quality of care and the ability of healthcare systems to meet patients’ needs. The continued approach could have a very negative effect on the health and possibly the delivery of healthcare services in the future.

Ethical Implications of the Solution 

The retention strategies of offering competitive wages and flexible working hours can be seen to meet the following ethical principles: beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, and justice. Beneficence focuses on doing good and enhancing the patient’s health (Varkey, 2021). Competitive salaries improve staff satisfaction, and thus, the level of burnout is reduced, which enhances the quality of care and safety. Additionally, nonmaleficence, or the principle of not harm, is protected by these strategies because work overload and burnout, which are related, present dangers to patient safety at the costory level. Naseem et al. (2024) show that shortages cause staff to work more, which leads to mistakes that negatively affect outcomes and safety.

Autonomy enhances the need to consider the preferences of healthcare workers. That is why flexible scheduling helps better control work-life balance since the staff cannot be sure when they will be needed at work. Lastly, justice aims to be equitable (Varkey, 2021). Competitive wages help provide fair wages, working against the wage squeeze that highly impacts marginalized groups. Further, equal distribution of resources and staffing services help increase access to care for patients who were once considered a deficit. Sustained through the execution of these principles, retention strategies develop a favorable and fair culture that is geared towards the health enhancement of the healthcare workers and the patients.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there is a lack of human resources in healthcare, unprecedentedly affecting the quality and safety of care and the healthcare workforce. This problem is worsened by burnout, an aging workforce, and a growing demand for patients, especially on the medical-surgical floors. To deal with such a problem, it is necessary to provide complex measures in the sphere of employees’ remuneration, scheduling, and organizational and psychological support to increase stimulating factors in the workplace. If the problem is not addressed, the error rates are higher, wait times are longer, and the systems are under pressure. The solutions proposed here reflect the ethical principles of beneficence, nonmaleficence, patient autonomy, and justice to guarantee ethical plans. Healthcare organizations should, therefore, consider implementing the following by finding ways of giving them a higher priority:

References

Džakula, A., Relić, D., & Michelutti, P. (2022). Health workforce shortage – doing the right things or doing things right? Croatian Medical Journal, 63(2), 107–109. https://doi.org/10.3325/cmj.2022.63.107

NHS FPX 4000 Assessment 4 Analyzing a Current Health Care Problem or Issue

Griffiths, P., Saville, C., Ball, J. E., Jones, J., & Monks, T. (2021). Beyond ratios – flexible and resilient nurse staffing options to deliver cost-effective hospital care and address staff shortages: A simulation and economic modelling study. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 117(117). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2021.103901 

NAMI. (n.d.). Workforce: Scholarship and loan repayment programs. Nami.org. https://www.nami.org/advocacy/policy-priorities/improving-health/workforce-scholarship-and-loan-repayment-programs/ 

Naseem, S., Naseem, S., & Amir, Z. (2024). Effect of staff shortage on patient safety and quality of care. Annals of Human and Social Sciences, 5(4), 158–164. https://doi.org/10.35484/ahss.2024(5-IV)16 

Peters, M. (2023). Time to solve persistent, pernicious and widespread nursing workforce shortages. International Nursing Review, 70(2), 247–253. https://doi.org/10.1111/inr.12837

Tamata, A. T., & Mohammadnezhad, M. (2022). A systematic review study on the factors affecting shortage of nursing workforce in the hospitals. Nursing Open, 10(3), 1247–1257. https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.1434

Varkey, B. (2021). Principles of clinical ethics and their application to practice. Medical Principles and Practice, 30(1), 17–28. https://doi.org/10.1159/000509119 

NHS FPX 4000 Assessment 4 Analyzing a Current Health Care Problem or Issue

Young, D. L. (2022). Turnover and retention strategies among mental health workers. Fortune Journal of Health Sciences, 5(2), 352–362. https://www.fortunejournals.com/articles/turnover-and-retention-strategies-among-mental-health-workers.html