Discussion: Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues
Quite often, nurse leaders are faced with ethical dilemmas, such as those associated with choices between competing needs and limited resources. Resources are finite, and competition for those resources occurs daily in all organizations.
For example, the use of 12-hour shifts has been a strategy to retain nurses. However, evidence suggests that as nurses work more hours in a shift, they commit more errors. How do effective leaders find a balance between the needs of the organization and the needs of ensuring quality, effective, and safe patient care?
In this Discussion, you will reflect on a national healthcare issue and examine how competing needs may impact the development of polices to address that issue. Hospital Acquired Pneumonia Essay Paper
To Prepare:
• Review the Resources and think about the national healthcare issue/stressor you previously selected for study in Module 1. NOTE: The national healthcare issue/stressor I addressed in module 1 is “HOSPITAL ACQUIRED PNEUMONIA. So, you are going to use this topic to answer questions related to this discussion.
• Reflect on the competing needs in healthcare delivery as they pertain to the national healthcare issue/stressor you previously examined.

Post an explanation of how competing needs, such as the needs of the workforce, resources, and patients, may impact the development of policy. Then, describe any specific competing needs that may impact the national healthcare issue/stressor you selected. What are the impacts, and how might policy address these competing needs? Be specific and provide examples.

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Hospital acquired pneumonia

Competition has typically been encouraged within the health care industry as a strategy for increasing value for all stakeholders. To be more precise, competition ensures the provision of better services and products that satisfy the needs of all stakeholders through improving processes and quality while reducing costs. For instance, capital limitations can restrict hospital control approaches such as having overcrowded wards. In the present case (addressing hospital acquired pneumonia), every resource is considered as scarce and subject to competing needs from other health care agendas. This makes efforts to prevent hospital acquired pneumonia in the midst of providing affordable and high-quality health care services an increasing challenge (Ruggiero, 2015). There is a conflict over whether to advocate for individual patients or equitable distribution of resources to larger populations. This conflict rests entirely on the role of social justice as it applies to the conflicting roles of non-maleficence (do no harm) and beneficence (do good) (Northouse, 2016). In addition, there are three resources of concern to the specific case owing to their scarcity. Firstly, the medical personnel who include nurses are limited in their capacities, skills, geography and time. Implementing strategies for preventing hospital acquired pneumonia are dependent on personnel awareness and their familiarity with the strategies. Having knowledgeable personnel is preferable since they are primed to understand and apply the prevention strategies. Secondly, facilities for delivering medical services are finite. It is not uncommon to have crowded facilities in the hospital. This situation is unlikely to change unless the facilities are expanded, a truly cost intensive endeavor. The facilities limitation can be addressed through making efficient use of the available resources so that high risk patients are isolated from the general populations. Thirdly, money for making changes to the facility is not unlimited. There are competing needs for money and there is a need to conduct a cost-benefit analysis to identify the agendas that have the least costs and most benefits (Joel, 2018).

References

Joel, L. (2018). Advanced practice nursing: essentials for role development (4^th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: F. A. Davis Company.

Northouse, P. (2016). Leadership: theory and practice (7^th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Ruggiero, V. (2015). Thinking critically about ethical issues (9^th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education. Hospital Acquired Pneumonia Essay Paper