Nurse-Patient Ratio

Provision of better healthcare has been one of the primary goals of most politicians as they woo for votes from the electorate.  The government has also come up with policies that ensure that its citizens get quality medical attention. Besides, they have also ensured that such services are affordable to its people. Nurses in both public and private hospitals have been on the forefront ensuring that patient gets the required medical attention. However, their efforts have been cut short by high nurse-patient ratio which has been witnessed in most hospitals. According to Kiekkas (2013), a good number of hospitals are facing a shortage of nurses; this has increased the risk to patients. In addition, this has led a decrease in patient safety.  According to American Nurse Association, inadequate nurses have had a positive correlation to an increased chance of death among patients. The situation of understaffing has been worse in especially in the high dependency units.

According to Breakey (2015), inadequate staffing level has compromised the patient safety due to fatigue. In most hospital which has been understaffed, nurses are forced to work for more twelve hours. This has taken a toll on nurse which in the end has reduced their work performance. Eventually, the quality of health services has decreased leading to an increase in deaths (Kiekkas, 2013).  Increasing the number of nurses in hospitals should be one of the priorities of the central and federal government. Solving this issue will ensure that the patient safety has improved as well as reducing the number of deaths related to understaffing. Besides, this will boost the morale of nurse since they will no longer be overworked.