Literature Evaluation Table
Running head: Staff Shortage 1
Staff Shortage 2
Professional Capstone and Practicum
Staff Shortage
Liliana Faura
GCU
12/01/2019
Staff Shortage
Introduction
Provision of quality health care is the primary objective of health care provider facilities across the entire world, but many have failed in this process due to various reasons. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) the number of people globally who receive substandard health services have in the past five years increased by close to 12.5% from the previous 9.5% in 2012. This is having created worry among the key stakeholders in health care who some fear that if something isn’t done as soon as possible then the situation could get out of hand very quickly. On the main problem which has contributed to this stalemate in the health care sector is the shortage of staff in many of the medical facilities.
The typical context in which this problem is very evident is in many third world countries which struggles with so many challenges like economic empowerment, lack of appropriate infrastructural development and proper education pre-disposition of a relatively larger percentage of the citizens (Caulder et al 2015). Although the problem of staff shortage is very common in third world countries, some of the countries in developed countries still face staff shortage in their health care centers. Hence the context in which the problem best manifest itself seems to be very wide as it cuts across the African continent, Europe and even larger parts of Asian regions.
According to the United Nations report on 2013 which revealed the dire need of increasing the number of medical practitioners in the medical field indicated that at least three children out of ten die every day to due to shortage of medical staff to attend to their medical or health conditions (Holdren, Paul & Coustasse, 2015). The worst affected regions according to the report is countries hit hard by the civil wars especially Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq also some sections of the African continent controlled by armed militia. In June 2014 the center for disease center (CDC) had indicated in their progress report on the Ebola case in Sierra Leon that they had faced challenge of enough staff to help in the fight against Ebola (Khamisa, Peltzer, & Oldenburg, 2017). This just add on the statistics which is already there of the issue of staff shortage in medical centers a global crisis.
The impacts of staff shortage need not even clarification for its implications is evident in many health care centers and even the statistics of quality of health care services across various countries and even continents (McNeil, Mitchell, & Parker, 2015). One of the implications of this problem includes the reduced quality of health care services given to patients as seen in the number of patients’ readmission cases which according to the WHO is on a rise. Also, this problem has led to further deterioration of health of many malnourished people who need urgent medical care (Ochi et al 2016). This is because the number for instance of children who are fighting starvation due to civil wars and even drought is constantly increasing. And if there is no proper mechanism put in place to address the issue of staff shortage in many healthcare facilities then the provision of universal health care coverage as stated in the sustainable development goals of the United Nation can be forgotten.
The preferable solution to this problem of staff shortage in many health care centers could be enactment of policy that compels any health care certain to have a bare minimum of a certain number of care givers (Oppel & Young, 2018). And this bare minimum number could be arrived at after sampling the number of people the health care center is likely to serve. Also, another solution could be subsidizing the process of training to become a medical practitioner so that many can comfortably afford to pay for the process. Lastly is provision of good working environment which would motivate more medical practitioners not to opt out of the practice.
References
Caulder, C. R., Mehta, B., Bookstaver, P. B., Sims, L. D., Stevenson, B., & South Carolina Society Of Health-System Pharmacists. (2015). Impact of staff shortages on health system quality in the Southeastern United States. Hospital pharmacy, 50(4), 279-286.
Holdren, P., Paul III, D. P., & Coustasse, A. (2015). Burnout syndrome in hospital nurses.
Khamisa, N., Peltzer, K., Ilic, D., & Oldenburg, B. (2017). Effect of personal and work stress on burnout, job satisfaction and general health of hospital nurses in South Africa. health sa gesondheid, 22(1), 252-258.
Martin, C. J. (2015). The effects of nurse staffing on quality of care. MedSurg Nursing, 24(2), S4-S4.
McNeil, K., Mitchell, R., & Parker, V. (2015). The paradoxical effects of workforce shortages on rural interprofessional practice. Scandinavian journal of caring sciences, 29(1), 73-82.
Ochi, S., Tsubokura, M., Kato, S., Iwamoto, S., Ogata, S., Morita, T., ... & Kanazawa, Y. (2016). Hospital staff shortage after the 2011 triple disaster in Fukushima, Japan-an earthquake, tsunamis, and nuclear power plant accident: a case of the Soso District. PLoS One, 11(10), e0164952.
Oppel, E. M., & Young, G. J. (2018). Nurse staffing patterns and patient experience of care: An empirical analysis of US hospitals. Health services research, 53(3), 1799-1818.
Shihundla, R. C., Lebese, R. T., & Maputle, M. S. (2016). Effects of increased nurses' workload on quality documentation of patient information at selected Primary Health Care facilities in Vhembe District, Limpopo Province. Curationis, 39(1), 1-8.