Question

Mr Boggs is a nurse manager for a busy ICU. He cannot cover all three shifts with the nurses he has available. what are the values, virtues, or obligations at stake in this case?

Answer 1

The nursing manager has a very difficult job in hand. One hand he would want his nursing staff to be refreshed, competent and be ready to do their job in an efficient manner so the qaulity of care provided is good. However, on the other hand due to shortage of staff he has to ask them to do long shifts. Various clinical studies have shown when nursing staff are asked to perform long shifts which comprises of around 12 hours, they are more liable to do mistakes which can adversly impact the health of the patient. So, the nursing manager is in a dilemna that how should he manage his staff better so they are avaialble at all times and still perform their work at an acceptable quality.

The choice of working in long shifts depends on individual at times. It has been observed that experienced staff have less chances of having an error during work rather than young less experienced staff. So, he needs to talk to each and every nursing staff and ask their honest opinion that how much work per day they could do in an efficient manner. He should also ensure from the human resource department about the increments and extra pay that they would receive for working overtime. He should also ensure to the staff who are not taking long hours to not worry as they can do it at some other time. Ultimately, quality should not be affected that would be the main goal.

These are short term solutions which can be solving the issues at hand. The long term solutions would be a request to the hospital to employ more number of nursing staff to ensure quality in healthcare because ultimately its the health of the patient which is at stake. Moreover, on a larger scale there should be laws that prohibit working of nurses for more than 12 hours per day, as it is exhaustive and dose not ensure proper quality.