Nursing Satisfaction Discussion

Nursing Satisfaction Discussion

Nursing Satisfaction Discussion

Question Description
Step 1 Read the scenario.

You are one year into your first nurse manager position, and you have noticed that your staffing is way below average. Your turnover rate is 13%, and you have noticed that new RNs stay only about six to nine months after orientation. You are hearing complaints from staff about constantly orienting new RNs. You also hear patient complaints that staff members are not anticipating their needs. This is affecting your budget, staff morale, and patient outcomes. Additionally, a number of documentation and medication errors have occurred over the last three months, and these mistakes are contributing to poor patient outcomes.

Step 2 Post your response to the discussion board.

Discuss short- and long-term decisions to help alleviate problems on your unit. Respond to the following questions and, if it’s relevant, include your own personal experience:

Discuss the concerns of this unit and any priorities that will need to be analyzed immediately.
Explain your short-term (zero- to six-month) decisions and plan.
Describe your long-term decisions and your rationale for making these decisions.
Step 3 Read other students’ posts and respond to at least two of them by Friday at 11:59pm Mountain Time.

Use your personal experience, if it’s relevant, to support or debate other students’ posts. If differences of opinion occur, debate the issues professionally and provide examples to support opinions.

Peer Discussion 1 (Patricia)

This scenario is very similar to one I experienced recently and explores some very important issues in my area of behavioral health.

Short term decisions (0-6 months)

My unit was made up of a team of nurses, social workers, psychiatrists, technicians, and a pharmacist and for this team to function effectively, we needed collaboration and cooperation between the members (Team management principles, n.d., slide 4). My initial step as a manager would be to speak to and listen to each member of the team to ascertain where the problem areas are and attempt to address those issues in order of importance. The first priority is the negative effect on patient outcomes and reinforcing that patient care is paramount. Some other short-term items I would address are:

Is additional training needed? Medication and charting errors must be reduced.
Is there adequate communication between team members?
Are additional resources needed to improve the situation?
How can I improve morale? (Recognition, small gifts, time off?)
I would ensure that all the members of the team felt respected and their problems were serious enough to be addressed.

From a personal perspective, my recent experience led to my resignation and the main problem was a complete lack of response or action from management for a serious safety issue that was reported on more than one occasion over many months. This issue negatively affected the safety of patients, the staff working with me, and staff morale. The impression I got was that the administration of our unit was professionally unqualified and uneducated on the actual workings of the unit and despite numerous resignations, did not feel the need to change anything. “Nurse managers and their actions have an impact on staff motivation” (Finkelman, 2015, p. 222).

Nursing Satisfaction Discussion

Nursing Satisfaction Discussion

Long term decisions

Staff turnover is very expensive for the healthcare organization due to costs of orientation and training of new staff, arranging cover for vacant posts, increased preceptor time and unproductive staff while training (Finkelman, 2015). To improve the retention of staff, I would implement the following:

Additional administrative support and professional development
Promote teamwork
Improve staff orientation and perform annual evaluations
Provide prompt feedback to staff
Ensure open communication between team members and management
Offer competitive salaries and benefits (Team management principles, n.d., slide 19).
These items will address staff support, improve communication between team members, reduce turnover, improve staff morale and patient care, and retain staff that is well-trained and professional.

References

Finkelman, A. (2015). Leadership and management for nurses: core competencies for quality care. (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson. https://online.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781323400449/cfi/6/2[;vnd.vst.idref=cover]!

Peer Discussion 2 (Kristen)

The biggest concern from this scenario is patient safety. There are poor patient outcomes due to medication errors and documentation. My first step in a plan to alleviate this problem would be to increase my knowledge to be an effective manager. “A new nurse manager needs to increase their knowledge in the areas of communication skills, time management, and delegation if they are to grow from their previous position as a staff nurse” (Pearson, n.d.). I will need to speak with all staff nurses to understand what changes they see that need to be fixed and how mediation errors can be reduced. Things that go in account would be, errors occurring because of low staff numbers or additional education needed for staff nurses. My next step would be to provide support to the staff. “By offering support such as coming in to unit and assisting with staffing crisis, allows the staff nurses to know they matter” (Pearson, n.d.). Also, it is important to promote teamwork. When everyone works together, it allows for the best possible care for all the patients. Another goal would be to complete evaluations with each staff nurse and provides appropriate feedback. By completing evaluations, the staff are acknowledged of their hard work and job performance. My long-term goal is to have a well-functioning environment on my unit. This will be completed by completing increasing my nurse manager knowledge, providing evaluations and feedback, and offering support to all staff nurses.

Reference:

Pearson. (n.d.). TOPIC 03: Professional Development. Retrieved August 10, 2020, from https://media.pearsoncmg.com/pls/us/edaff/13236026…

Nursing Satisfaction Discussion

Nursing Satisfaction Discussion

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.