What Interventions Reduce the Impact of Long Working Hours for Nurses in Care

Outcome: Reduction in the Impact of Insufficiency Regarding Patient Dissatisfaction and Nurse Fatigue Among Others

Nurses particularly have to work long hours than in many other professionals due to the increased demand in the healthcare system. Developments in the healthcare system such as the establishment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) popularly known as the Obama health care, has increased the number of patients seeking medical attention. To this end, nurses are further forced to work long shifts. Studies have shown nurses that nurses that work long hours often suffer burnout, fatigue, job dissatisfaction and the intent to leave the job. Studies have associated these long shifts with the outcome of medical errors, patient dissatisfaction among others all which contribute to increasing health risk on the part of the patients.

With the impending crisis, scholars have suggested the need to increase the number of nurse staff nationally as a manner to reduce the long working shifts. It is believed that more nurses will reduce the length of the shifts. In this way, nurses will be more relaxed as they report to duty giving them an upper hand in caring for the patients. Overworked nurses have been associated with daytime sleepiness, negative cognition emotions among other negative attributes (Kunaviktikul et al., 2015). Research has shown that these elements have been on a gradual increment in the recent years due to the increasing number of patients. While the numbers promise to continue surging, it is essential to factor methods that will make the nurses more efficient in an endeavor to increase patient satisfaction.