Impact of Working Hours on the Quality of Work or Services by Registered Nurses (Essay Sample)

Impact of Working Hours on the Quality of Work or Services by Registered Nurses
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The quality of work or services delivered by registered nurses largely depends on the number of working hours. Longer working hours will result to poor quality of nursing care, jobs satisfaction, and patient safety. The poor impact of nurses on provision of services is caused by registered nurses getting tired while at their places of work. Tiredness causes poor decision making, and this leads to inappropriate and ineffective execution of processes and operations. In addition, it causes poor relationships between registered nurses and their patients and families. The issue of nurses working longer hours is caused by their shortages in healthcare settings. This paper therefore discusses the impact of longer working hours on the quality of work or services offered by registered nurses.
Causes and Impact of Longer Hour Shifts
Longer shifts for nurses are caused by a number of factors. The need for continuity of care, poor policies and regulations, staffing challenges, nurses working fewer days, and fluctuations in patient needs and demands (Stimpfel et al., 2012). These are the issues that have led to poor outcomes of nursing decisions and processes in healthcare centers today. In fact, the advent of the corona virus pandemic has led to more problems for registered nurses. They have been forced to work longer hours to address the delicate needs and demands of nurses. Similarly, poor policies and regulations have led to registered nurses working longer hours. Poor policies and regulations have impeded the appropriate training of nurses and have led to shortages of nursing professionals in healthcare settings. Healthcare leaders have failed to provide measures and strategies that attract more individuals joining nursing training institutions. This has led to shortages that have pushed existing nurses to work longer hours.
The impacts of longer shifts for registered nurses are: burnout, patient dissatisfaction, poor patient safety, poor decision making, and high employee turnover rates. For instance, nurse burnouts are caused by physical and mental health issues caused by overworking (Thompson, 2019). In this case, nurses are exposed to longer working hours which cause physical and mental issues. This negatively impacts how they execute decisions and processes and in the process expose patients to poor healthcare environments as well as leading to poor patient satisfaction. According to Baillie and Thomas (2019), nurses who work shorter hours (such as 8 hours) have better outcomes. They develop job satisfaction, improve attainment of the set targets, and ensure that the needs and demands of patients are attained. This leads to improved patient satisfaction. In general these are issues that identify why nurses should work shorter. Improving how registered nurses work will allow them to focus on improving the general outcomes of their patients and families.