Recent orders
Overview of the Problem.
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Institutional Affiliation
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Overview of the Problem.
Short staffing in the med/surgical unit has been a significant concern in the Local Community Hospital with its impact felt both by the nurses, patients, and hospital management. The nurses are strained as they attend to the patients; they do not have quality time to visit the patients so that they can help them in their healing process. The patients also struggle to get enough attention as they may require to make enquires and other services that the nurses provide. The hospital management also is strained to live up to the promises of providing adequate health care to its patients. This issue of a nurse-patient ratio is also a thorn in the flesh for the management as the nurses once in a week stage a demonstration calling for safe staffing. The issue of understaffing by the administration it also impacts the relationship between the Hospital management and the nurses’ representatives. The management ought to come up with a scheme that will oversee the employment of nurses so that the patient-nurse ratio will be one to one. With appropriate planning, this is achievable. If appropriately staffed, the unit would consist of eight Registered Nurses, a Charge Nurse without an assignment, a “STAT” Nurse that floats from group to unit to assist with whatever may be helpful to them at that time, and six Nurses. The suggested six nurses attend to five patients each.
Literature Review.
An Act relative to patient safety and hospital transparency relates to how the nurse staffing ratio affects the access to health care and security of the patients. It is true that a one to one ratio between patients and nurses will improve safety and health care access, but this ratio cannot be achieved. Therefore, there should be a safe ratio between the nurse and patients. According to MacPhee (2006), 86% of the nurses say they cannot spend quality time with the patient to give them primary education on their health problems, and 90% of the nurses are unable to help patients and patient families emotionally. Improved ratios, whereby a nurse can attend to a manageable number of patients, will enable patients to receive quality health care as well as access to vital information. However, most hospitals put profits first to patient health care. Thus they minimize the funds for nurses’ salaries, consequently having fewer nurses at the same time admitting more patients. Such a move by the hospital management limits the time that a nurse gets to spend with the patients, as well as the nurses, are strained, which can lead to their ineffective at work. Annals of intensive care study in 2017 found out in their 845 patients’ research that 95% of the patients survived when the hospital enforced the agreed nurse to patient ratio. Thus this report suggests that a reasonable rate guarantees a better survival chance for the patients.
The nurse staffing that will be adequate to handle the hospital patients was the principal finding in the report of the Institute of Medicine Committee on the adequacy of nursing homes and hospitals. The number of nurses in a hospital determined the quality that the patients receive in a particular hospital. However, the quality of the care a nurse offers depends on issues such as personal knowledge and experience. Experience and vast knowledge enable a nurse to have better ways in which they can deal with a different scenario, thus handling the patients better. Human factors such as fatigue play an essential role in the quality of services that a nurse offers. The nurse is a human; therefore, their state of mind should be taken care of: when they work for long, they can do shoddy work as Schwab et al. (2012) notes. The patient’s needs also affect the quality of service a nurse offers to the patients. A troublesome patient is likely to be attended to for a short period compared to a cooperating patient. Working conditions also play a significant role in determining the quality of service that a nurse can offer. For instance, hospitals that remunerate well, pay for extra working hours, and treat their nurses with dignity; their nurses provide quality services to the patients since their individual needs have been satisfied. Maslow, in his hierarchy of needs, insists on this idea and suggests that when individual needs have been met, then they work effectively. This paper indicates that quality health care can be assured provided other factors that affect it have been taken into consideration.
The American Nurses Association has advocated for safer staffing, and this has been their clarion call. The nurses are essential components in the healthcare sector; they are the people who spend the most time with the patients; thus, they hugely contribute to the patients’ healing. When hospitals are understaffed, it leads to several worst-case scenarios. For instance, when the hospital is understaffed, it can lead to patient deaths, more infections, patients’ falls, and medical errors. This can be attributed to nurses working for long hours, compromising the care for the patients, and driving the nurses away from the bedside according to Dunton et al. (2004). When the ratio of nurse to the patient is so high, such issues are bound to occur. Therefore, there is a need that hospital management should have a better nurse-patient ratio, which will facilitate better service delivery to the patients. A manageable number of patients by the nurse is equal to good health care. With the suggested ratio of one nurse to five patients, it will enable a nurse to have enough time to share information with the patient and help them. Also, the errors which are likely to be caused due to the burden of work are eliminated, thus ensuring proper health care. The American nurses association also advocates for legislation that will force hospital management to employ enough nurses according to the capacity of the hospital.
According to Patterson J (2010), nurses in the national health system are concerned that due to large influx patients, the nurses have been overstretched. The overworking of the nurses cannot, therefore, guarantee the safe and quality nursing of the patients. For instance, not only does understaffing affect patient care but also the nurses’ job satisfaction and burn out. As Aiken et al. (2005) notes, nurses working in understaffed hospitals had complaints on job satisfaction nurses with heavy workloads also experienced burnout. The understaffing of the nurses indeed affects them since they have several tasks to carry out as well as spending long hours while working. This affects the nurses working efficiency, which in turn leads to treatment inadequacies. With the proposed changes, nurses will be able to work within their human limits as they look forward to delivering better care and services to the patients. A ratio of one nurse to five patients should be considered and acted upon.
The change process.
I would propose a Quality Improvement Team to be formed; this team will oversee the changes in terms of the nurse to patient ratio as well as the communication channel. The team will deal with the process of proposing that the hospital management can adopt to employ nurses to meet the demands of the patients. The team will include the chief executive officer of the hospital, one member of the hospital management, the head of the nurses, a nurse, and a doctor. The members should give their issues of concern and how nursing affects their various departments to have better formulae to employ more nurses. With the input from the multiple departments, the Quality Improvement Team can come up with a comprehensive plan that will deal with understaffing and a way to provide better health care to their patients. With such a plan in place, a proper channel of communication breakdown should be established. In this case, the information should be breaking down from the upper cadre to the lower staff. That is, the information should flow from the chief executive officer to the manager in charge of nurses, then the nurse in charge it gets to the nurses in general and vice versa. Such a protocol will ensure a centralized way of communicating. Therefore, nurses will be aware of the source of information.
References
Schwab, F., Meyer, E., Geffers, C., & Gastmeier, P. (2012). Understaffing, overcrowding, inappropriate nurse: ventilated patient ratio and nosocomial infections: which parameter is the best reflection of deficits?. Journal of Hospital Infection, 80(2), 133-139.
Aiken, L. H. (2005). Improving quality through nursing. Policy challenges in modern health care, 177-88.
Bost, N., Crilly, J., Wallis, M., Patterson, E., & Chaboyer, W. (2010). Clinical handover of patients arriving by ambulance to the emergency department–a literature review. International emergency nursing, 18(4), 210-220.
Dunton, N., Gajewski, B., Taunton, R. L., & Moore, J. (2004). Nurse staffing and patient falls on acute care hospital units. Nursing outlook, 52(1), 53-59.
MacPhee, M., Ellis, J., & McCutheon, A. S. (2006). Nurse staffing and patient safety. Canadian Nurse, 102(8).
The Common Core Standards
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The Common Core Standards
About the Common Core
The Common Core contains academic standards in English and Mathematics considered to be of high quality. The set of standards contain goals that outline what students should be knowledgeable about by the time they are done with each grade. The Common Core was bent on making sure all learners leave high school with the right information to prosper in college, career, and consequently life irrespective of where they are from (CCSSI, n.d.). The Common Core ware created to respond to the need for consistent learning outcomes in the entire country.
Developmental Appropriateness for Learners
Some people claim that the Common Core standards may not be developmentally suitable with its problems concentrated in the early grades. Kindergarten children are not ready to read, though they are required to by the standards. What these people do not acknowledge is that experienced professionals from K-3 teachers to early childhood experts developed these standards. The standards are created to fit the requirements of the 21st Century labor market and the challenges of today’s higher education.
States incorporated these standards into their school systems because they set rigorous, measurable objectives for every child, ensuring that there will be more candidates for college and students on the path to careers. The Fordham Institute conducted an analysis of the Common Core Standards and reported a significant improvement over most states’ academic expectations. There was also greater comparability between states, and districts-all teachers have a tool on best practices and ways to track student growth.
The implementation process may not be doing the Common Core justice, but the States are still running through with them. They are continuing to run the program because it is setting clear, consistent expectations for students in terms of college and career preparations. Out of all the 45 states that adopted the standards, only Oklahoma has replaced them.
For those questioning the appropriateness of these standards in terms of development, they should first remember that there is no clear-cut information on when a child is ready to learn anything that is scientifically backed. Then again, a child’s cognition changes, and these standards are in line with the capacity of 21st Century children. Usually, by saying the Common Core Standards are developmentally inappropriate, what critics mean is, “this is too hard.”
There is no reason to perceive that the literary benchmarks set by the Common Core for kindergarten are too hard. The National Centre for Education Statistics reports that 2 in three children at the kindergarten level recognize letters from the alphabet both in lower and uppercase before they enter kindergarten. Knowledge of the alphabet is one of the “foundational skills” projected under these standards. No parent would want their children to graduate kindergarten without knowledge of the alphabet. Sixty-one percent of children come to kindergarten with more than two concepts of the common core, such as understanding that text is read from left to right.
Why is it called the common core?
It is called the common core because it is a singular academic standard for the entire nation (Trachta, 2018). This, however, does not ring true in practice because only 34 states and the District of Colombia are still fully committed to it. in other states, however, it has been a benchmark for custom state standards. Some states have repealed part of the Common Core, or others have developed their own version. Since every state uses it as a benchmark and is creating custom versions, its common status somehow still reigns.
What the Common Core means to me
The people raising controversy over these standards have not had the time to interact with them at the same level as teachers. Getting to know them reduces the anxiety about how these standards will affect classrooms and students. The Common Core, to me, is an opportunity for teachers to create curricula that can help struggling students catch up using materials that match the Common Core. By standardizing education outcomes, the Common Core is the answer to educational inequality. With proper teacher training, the challenge of adjusting a curriculum to the Common Core is reduced, and teachers can now be able to take advantage of it fully.
Why I support the Common Core
The first reason why I support the Common Core is that it is not an absolute requirement but rather a guide. Those people that disregard these standards do it based on rigidity, which is not correct. The Common Core is adopted by states in different ways, in ways that suit their needs and does not require teaching specific text. The Common Core is just but a recommendation that only works to satisfy certain standards despite the means. This is why it is so useful and practical. I support it because I understand that it is not a rigid set of rules but a dependable benchmark that will achieve great results in developing students that are ready and heading towards college and excellent careers.
I believe that the goals of the Common Core are very sensible, especially in those states that have been ranking below average or far below in these essential subjects. By using a standard that is used in almost every state, the whole nation educates its children and future leaders at the same level. The use of Common Core is an assurance that students will receive a high-quality education. I support this because it will change the statistics, which see 60 percent of students joining colleges needing remedial classes in Math and English, or only 34 percent of eighth-graders showing adequate knowledge of grade-level math and the 30 percent of high-school graduates failing Military entry exams (Riley, 2014).
References
Common Core State Standards Initiative. (n.d.). About the Standards. Home | Common Core State Standards Initiative. https://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/Riley, B. (2014, March 25). Why I Support Common Core Standards. National Review. https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/03/why-i-support-common-core-standards-bob-riley/Trachta, A. (2018, March 28). Don’t Be Afraid to Ask … What Exactly IS Common Core? Niche. https://www.niche.com/blog/what-is-common-core/
Introductive to Leadership and Trait Perspective
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Introductive to Leadership and Trait Perspective
Discussion A: Similarities and Differences in Management
People mistake management to be similar to leadership, but in essence, the two are different concepts. The main dissimilarity between the two is that for leaders, they have individuals follow them while managers act as supervisors. Leadership is about convincing people to comprehend and trust in a vision that the leader has set for the company. Management, on the other hand, is about administering and ensuring that the daily operations of the organization are happening accordingly (Popovici, 2012). In simple terms, leadership is about motivating, while management is about organization.
Leaders are usually about motivation and praise for the success of followers while and work to generate drive in people. Managers, on the other hand, are fixated on faults and suggesting solutions. Leaders create an image of what where the organization should be and work to increase engagement to turn that vision into actuality. They consider people to be beyond just skills and activate them to be a part of something bigger. They are aware of how important it is to be able to create functioning teams that work together rather than working autonomously.
The similarities between leadership and management are that they all work to allocate the available assets in an efficient way. They have one goal to maximize earnings and establish a strong bottom line for the organization. Both managers and leaders are working towards a goal. Their roles involve influencing the environment and the work structure. Both managers and leaders work towards a vision. Both roles involve working with people and providing direction, although the way they do this is unique to each.
In conclusion, leadership and management are not the same; however, they are interdependent. The confusion might come from the similarities of both; however, leadership is the art of providing direction for people, while management is about strategic planning and defining purposes and ensuring they are followed. Leadership requires self-awareness and self-direction.
Discussion B: Choosing a New Director of Research
According to the traits presented in Tables 2.1 and 2.2, Sandra should select Kelsey Metts. Kelsey is the best candidate because she is able to combine two traits that are not usually found in the same person. These two traits are intelligence and sociability. This trait is helpful in this situation because intellect is possibly linked to leadership. Kelsey is very intelligent, as indicated by her MBA at Harvard and the fact that she graduated first of her class in such a competitive institution. With this kind of trait, a person like Kelsey is not expected to be sociable because intelligent people are usually pre-occupied with their thoughts or may have difficulties communicating with others because of the complexity of their ideas. And the intelligent effect becomes counterproductive (Antonakis, House, & Simonton, 2017). Since Kelsey is a very sociable person, the combination of these traits become very beneficial. The evidence of the success of all her four products might be a testimony of the importance of having these two qualities. The sentiments that Kelsey should one day be the president of her own company adds to her viability for this position. Sociability and human relations are very important for any leader.
The problem of high IQ and leadership is that it generates negative effects. It is important for leaders to be intelligent, but when the intelligence score goes too high, the benefits become negative as the high IQ starts to meddle. This may be explained by the inability of people with high IQ to interact with people and become sociable. A leader should be a person that is able to use words to help people comprehend and follow a certain vision. Without proper interaction and meaningful communication with subordinates, leaders can be perceived to lack self-confidence, another very important trait in leadership.
References
Antonakis, J., House, R. J., & Simonton, D. K. (2017). Can super smart leaders suffer from too much of a good thing? The curvilinear effect of intelligence on perceived leadership behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(7), 1003.
Popovici, V. (2012). Similarities and differences between management and leadership. Annals-Economy Series, 2, 126-135.