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.
Sample Solution
Identifying and Describing Competing Needs
In the context of an overwhelmed public hospital ED facing staffing shortages, at least two significant competing needs are:
Patient Need for Timely and Quality Care vs. Resource Limitations (Staffing & Funding):
- Patient Need: Patients presenting to the ED, especially those with urgent or emergent conditions, require rapid assessment, diagnosis, and intervention to prevent adverse outcomes. Timely care is crucial for patient safety and satisfaction.
- Resource Limitations: Public hospitals, particularly in resource-constrained environments like Kenya, often operate with limited budgets. This directly impacts the ability to recruit and retain sufficient nursing staff due to factors like competitive salaries, adequate benefits, and professional development opportunities. The existing staff are stretched thin, leading to longer wait times, hurried interactions, and potentially compromised quality of care. This is a direct competition between the patient's right to care and the organization's capacity to provide it due to financial and human resource constraints.
Healthcare Worker Well-being (Nurses) vs. Organizational Demand for Service Delivery:
- Healthcare Worker Well-being: Nurses in understaffed EDs face immense pressure, working long hours, managing high patient loads, and experiencing emotional and physical exhaustion. This leads to burnout, moral distress, decreased job satisfaction, and increased turnover intentions. Their need for a manageable workload, adequate breaks, and a supportive work environment is essential for their health and continued service.
- Organizational Demand: The hospital, as a service provider, has a mandate to serve the community and cannot simply turn away patients, especially in an emergency setting. There's constant pressure from the public and government to maintain accessibility and throughput. This creates a tension where the organization's demand for continuous, high-volume service often overrides considerations for individual staff well-being, leading to mandatory overtime or an inability to adequately staff all shifts.