Ways in which Nurse to Patient Ratio Affect Seniors

For a country or state to achieve their goal in e health care system where every individual receives optimum health care then more nurses need to be employed. In most instances nurses tend to be under paid and their roles in the health sector under looked. In cases where a there is a shortage in the number of nurses in residential homes the situation is quite devastating. Burn out may in turn lead to low service delivery. In this blog the impacts of the nurses to patient ratio are clearly discussed.

To start with one of the ways in which nurse to patient ratio affect seniors is over working of the nurses. Due to shortage in the number of nurses the few available are made to work for long hours without a break In any case when a worker is overworked they tend not deliver as desired this is because they are tired and their concentration level is low. Tired and over worked nurses may tend to leave most of the work to the non-qualified staff exposing the seniors in the residential homes to danger.

The second way in which seniors are impacted by the low nurse to patient ratio is frequent resignation of qualified nurses. For one to trust a care giver or nurse they ought to have seen them around and known them quite well, however this is not the case as most nurses move from one nursing home to another looking for better working environments. Resignations by nurses affect seniors as they are left on the hand of under qualified personnel who may interfere with their healing processing.

Thirdly, due to the nurse to patient ratio the care standard among seniors tend to drop. Due to the small number of qualified nurses the seniors in the residential homes tend to receive care from unqualified staff which may be a threat the patients. The concentration of any individual tends to drop in cases where a lot of information tend to be processed at once thus the nurses to may have low concentration which lead to low services to the seniors in the residential homes.

Last but not least due to the poor condition of the public residential homes may people tend to have a negative attitude towards them. Most people would rather take their folks to private residential home due to the fact that public residential homes are not well managed. The negative notion on the nursing career has seen low number of qualified nurses and the few available may tend to work for non-governmental organisations for better pay bring down the quality of services in the public sector in general. All stake holders should therefore look into the ratio of nurse to patient to improve conditions to our seniors in residential homes.