Workload Issues In The Profession Of Caregiving: Causes And Impact

Reasons behind the increase in workload in the profession of care giving

Discuss about the Workload Issues In The Profession Of Caregiving.

In the modern working environment, workload is found to be of major concern, it effects the quality of work as well as the health of the workers irrespective of the field. The issue is of high relevance as it is deteriorating the productivity of performances from the professional’s side (Gupta, Li and Sharda 2013). Professional efficiency and proportion of the work base is directly related to one another, lesser the proportion of work better the results. The profession of nursing is of high relevance as it deals with the health of the public and a healthy population can only deliver positive outputs for a country’s economy (Aiken et al 2013).  

Workload in the profession of nursing is increasing with the increase in the population around the world. The issue is discussed elaborately in the following paragraphs with the incorporation of certain ideologies and procedures to minimize the negative impact of such situations in the organizational level.

The ways by which the problems related to workload in the field of nursing can be lessened or eradicated are also analyzed and discussed in the report.

There are basically four major reasons behind the elevation of workload of the nurses, the first being the increase in the demand of caregivers, it is because of the increase in the population of old age people as a result of the advancement of medical sciences (Carmona-Monge et al 2013). The population in totality is also increasing and the requirement of nurses is proportionally elevating. The second reason is the presence of nurses, inadequate for the scenario. The nursing schools are not able to fulfill the demands of producing the number of nurses annually needed in the health care industry. The shortage of professional people in the field is impacting the future of the profession in a severe manner. The third reason being the increase in the demand of delivering overtime duty and reduction in the number of staffs has also impacted the problematic scenario. The fourth reason is the reduction in the interval of patient’s stay in the health care centers. The increase in the cost of treatment in the present time has made the hospitals to ensure the reduction in the average time of the patient’s stay, this requires the work of the caregivers to be more intensive than before, as a result it is creating additional burden in the field of nursing.

Impact of workload in the field of nursing

The complexity of the nursing profession is in itself a challenge to cope up with, the inclusion of pressure in the profession is known to drastically influence the working process of the clinicians as a whole. The pressure that is created due to the reason, effects the well-being of the care givers also, they tend to have several physical and mental ailments due to the load they have to deal with, on a regular basis to maintain their efficiency levels (Bogaert et al 2013). People in the profession already have the demand of being on duty without scheduled routine as the profession demands the presence of the clinician at any time of the day.

The settings in which the nurses work often exceed the capacity and staffing levels, it creates additional problems in such set ups. The situation level work that the health personnel need to put emphasis on, remain neglected as the nurse do not have the time needed to retaliate such requirements. Such situations result in suboptimal performance by the care providers. Workload also contributes in the occurrence of stress, emotional exhaustion and anger among the caregivers, the thrust created by workload in the organization is so high in the present world that the profession is being avoided by the youth of today’s generation. Varied surveys done on the caregivers have highlighted the need to put emphasis on the need to decrease the workload in the nursing profession as it directly or indirectly influences the patient outcome (Aiken et al 2012).

The degree or measurement of workload cannot be quantitatively inspected, the traditional measurement methods for the issue is not found to be apt to analyze the criticalness of the problem. They do not capture the concern adequately. In the recent times, the measurement of the impact is done in a dynamic and comprehensive way, the criteria that are considered for the analysis purpose are of major importance, they include the examination of the scenario by dividing the aspect into psychological, physiological and procedural parts which are going to be discussed in the following paragraphs (Myny et al 2012).

Considering the criteria of psychology is important in analyzing the degree of workload in caregiving profession (Daud-Gallotti et al 2012). The mental well-being of the professionals in the field reflects on the output of their working. The nurses tend to have a lessened level of efficiency when they have work pressure, the impact of imbalanced mental health can have detrimental consequences as they work on several critical patients at the same time. The patients are immensely effected if the treatment is not properly administered to them.

Measurement of the degree of workload in the profession of nursing

Physiological well-being is also considered as the physical health of the nurses can deteriorate the planning proficiency that the nurses take care of. The proficiency if not up to the standard that is required in the process of caregiving, can have highly reduced patient outcome. Patient outcome directly impacts on the productivity of a health care center which distracts the patients from visiting such centers (Berry and Curry 2012).

Procedural aspect of nursing is the measurement of the response latency of the personnel. Workload is often seen to make the health professional dormant or latent in their work, the efficiency of a health care center is highly effected by such situations as it diminishes the productivity and has a lethal impact on the patient under the professional as they are not taken care of in the right way.

There are several consequences that are noted to be seen as a result of increased workload of nurses. The safety of the patients is affected adversely due to heavy nursing related workload. Job satisfaction levels of the nurses in the profession has highly reduced as a consequence of elevated workload, the satisfaction of the caregivers is of significance as the productivity of their way of administration depends on it (Ball et all 2013). The nurses are seen to deliver duty for more than 12 hours a day, which is unethical on the professional’s side. The hectic schedule that they have to do their work in, reduces their interaction with the patients they are taking care of and as a result the analysis process that is done by the caregivers by conversing and communicating with patients, decreases (Van Bogaert et al 2013).

 The incorporation of the principles of caregiving based on strengths, requires the positive interaction between the nurse, the patient and the family, but workload devoid the professionals from doing so, due to lack of time. Such situations can highly effect the planning of treatment base as communication gap can create misunderstanding between the patient and care provider (Happell et al 2013). The workload in the profession as a result has only negative impact on client or patient outcome.

The atmosphere of the set up as a whole is also hampered as it arises many speculations between the caregivers and the patients due to the lack of proper planning in the organization. The patients if not given the attention needed lead to various violent conditions that are harmful for the management of the health care organization. The speculations can only be avoided by distributing work to the workload in an ethical manner.

Effects of workload on patient outcome

Effectivity of the nursing process can be increased by following certain methodologies. The implementation can be processed by the governance of the authorities of the health care centers in cooperation with the health care departments under the government of the associated countries. The governments of all the countries, facing this issue, should work on increasing the number of schools offering the degree course in nursing, this will partially decrease the problem of scarcity in the number of caregivers present in the health care centers (Görgens?Ekermans and Brand 2012).  Promotion of the nursing stream can also encourage the students for taking up caregiving as their profession, this will can also increase the number of people in the profession. The workload can also be lessened by the implementation of nursing process on the basis of the available evidences for a particular kind of condition (evidence based caregiving), it reduces the time taken for examination of a situation and increases the satisfaction levels of the caregivers (Van Bogaert et al 2014). It also minimizes the problems faced by the caregivers to operate under the stringent conditions by facilitating ideologies that can be implemented under the specific provided conditions. The management of the healthcare centers should also focus on keeping a track on the way, the evidences are taken under consideration for implementation of the evidences in the right way by the clinician. That is the decision making process should be analyzed by the higher authorities before incorporation (Bittner and O’connor 2012).

Students who are undertaking the subject to further take up nursing as a profession, should be given proper and influential training regarding the present scenario of the medical organizations. The students should be aware of the workload that the present health personnel have to handle and should be given lessons to tackle the situation. Regularizing the implementation of scenario study in the curriculum can also enhance their situation and they can implement their personalized study base while they face such crisis.

The process should be administered in a hierarchal way. It implies that the caregiving procedure should be scrutinized by other senior personnel in the profession so that the process is continuously under supervision (Lu et al 2012). It ensures and enhances the right kind of behavior from the nurse to the patient. There are several models available to be incorporated by the clinicians. The model of “patient care delivery system” is an ideal concept that can be incorporated in the health care setups. The model consists of the basic points that can reduce the period of caregiving and hence reducing the workload (Twigg and McCullough 2014). It is a three step procedure which considers the input, throughputs and outputs as major action plan points. Firstly, the characteristics of the client, provider and the behavior of the systems are considered, these are the basic inputs that should be analyzed by the authorities. The process of nursing care and the complex environmental characters should be then examined effectively. These points are considered to be throughputs of the model. The final point that is the output of the scenario is taken under governance of the health care organization that consists of the final patient outcomes, nursing outcomes and the outcome of the system as a whole.

Strategies to be implemented for minimizing the effects

Conclusion:

Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that the workload issues dealt by the clinical professionals are of major concern, the productivity and efficiency of the workplace majorly depend on the nurses associated with the health care organizations. The patient outcome or the client satisfaction is met basically by the way the caregivers operate with them. Increase in the workload of such personnel, decreases the patient outcome. The economy of the health care organization is also effected in such scenario. The impact of workload has been considered as a major issue in the present care giving industry, it has highly deteriorated the working in the healthcare industries as a whole. Strategical enhancement of such frameworks in the hospitals and nursing homes, improves the condition of the centers as well as increases the satisfaction levels of the care providers. The implementation of strategies is very much dependent on the management of health care centers, scrutinizing the implementation process is a major concern to be worked on, to decrease the pressure that the caregivers face in the centers. Working in health industry in itself is a challenge, increase in the work pressure has impact on the health of the caregivers too. The strategies should also have the inculcation of nursing outcomes as given in the model of patient care delivery system. More importance should be given to this particular issue as it is one of the determinant factors that can either build or break the backbone of the health care industry.

References:

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