Nursing Shortage in the United States Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Nursing Shortage in the United States - Essay Example This paper will describe the impacts of the nursing shortage on health care consumers, nurses, and public health. It will examine the debate surrounding the nursing shortage and explain how the issue is being addressed on local, state, and national levels. Finally, the paper will propose some ideas for minimizing the nursing shortage problem. The shortage of nurses in America's hospitals results in negative impacts for health care consumers, nurses, and the health care system. A survey conducted by Beurhaus et al. (2005) examined the experience of RNs, physicians, hospital CEOs and CNOs with the nursing shortage and analyzed the results in terms of nurses' ability to meet the six Institute of Medicine (IOM)-established aims for high quality health care systems: patient-centered, effective, safe, timely, efficient, and equitable. The survey found that each of these criteria for quality of care suffered due to the nursing shortage (ibid.). In terms of direct patient care, the nursing shortage results in a decline in the quality of patient care. The Beurhaus et al. survey (2005), found that patient care suffered specifically because of a delayed response by nurses to pages or calls, patients increasingly complaining about care, staff communication problems, and increasing physicians' workloads. The results of the decline in patient care are worrisome. An American Nurses Association (ANA) fact sheet about the national nursing shortage (2008) highlights the results of recent studies published in medical journals that show how the shortage puts patient's lives in danger: "If hospitals increased RN staffing, more than 6,700 patient deaths and four million inpatient days could be avoided each year." "Every additional full-time nurse per patient day was associated with a 9% reduction in mortality in intensive care patients and a 16% reduction in mortality in surgical patients. In addition, every additional patient per RN shift was associated with a 53% increase in pulmonary failure, a 43% increased risk on unplanned extubation, a 7% increased risk of hospital acquired pneumonia, and a 17% increased risk in other medical complications." "Nursing shortages were found to correlate with longer lengths of stay, increased incidence of urinary tract infections and upper gastrointestinal bleeding, higher rates of pneumonia, shock and cardiac arrest. Increased hours of RN care resulted in fewer "failure-to-rescue" deaths from pneumonia, shock or cardiac arrest, upper gastrointestinal bleeding, sepsis and deep venous thrombosis." The impact of the nursing shortage also adversely affects nurses. In relation to their interaction with patients, nurses suffer because they have less time for collaboration within staff teams, face greater difficulty maintaining patient safety, are less able to detect complications early on, and have less time for patients (Beurhaus et al., 2005). In order to compensate for a lack of staff,

The Fast-Food Industry in USA Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Fast-Food Industry in USA - Essay Example Despite the positive side that fast-food restaurants enjoy with regard to sales and revenues, they have likewise received a fair share of criticism. Most of the critics against the industry focus on the negative health effects that go along with consumption of fast-foods. Fast food chains hit the headlines after consumer groups, like the Center for Science in the Public Interest claimed that products from the industry had worrying amount of fats, caloric content and portion sizes. Tragically, Animal rights activists state that animals in production plants spend their entire lives in extremely intolerable conditions. Little fresh air, pasture and natural light were also sighted. On the same note, animals in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations are regularly kept on antibiotics that for a long time now have been linked with the cause of antibiotic resistance in humans after continued use of fast foods.After immense pressure from consumers, McDonald’s recently announced that it would scrap out the sales of meat treated with human antibiotics. The move gives McDonald's’ a strong competitive advantage over other fast-food chains like Chick Fill A, Wendy’s and Burger King who are yet to publicly announce the implementation of such a program. The move is also welcomed by the public who have long advocated for production of antibiotic-free meat from fast food chains. It is now a guessing game for market analysts as some now purport that consumers will begin showing bias towards McDonald’s antibiotic-free products.