Specific Competing Needs That May Impact Physicians and Nursing Shortage NURS 6053 ORGANIZATIONAL POLICIES AND PRACTICES TO SUPPORT HEALTHCARE ISSUES
NURS 6053 ORGANIZATIONAL POLICIES AND PRACTICES TO SUPPORT HEALTHCARE ISSUES
Competing needs occur within an organization when employees strive to meet their targets derived from the organization’s goals. Managers are required to establish priorities and allocate resources accordingly to manage the competing needs. Nonetheless, various ethical issues arise in healthcare resource allocation. For example, how limited resources should be allocated and the values that should guide resource allocation (Kelly & Porr, 2018). This paper seeks to discuss how competing needs may impact policy development and how any specific competing needs may impact physician and nursing shortage.
How Competing Needs May Impact the Development of Policy
Competing needs in healthcare include the needs of human resources, financial resources, and patients. Healthcare resources, financial and workforce, are often scarce while goals are large, and managers need to plan to meet the priority needs (Holecki et al., 2018). Competing needs such as workforce and financial resources may influence the development of policies that avail more resources for healthcare systems to increase accessibility to healthcare (Holecki et al., 2018). Policies are often developed to help meet healthcare needs and promote better health outcomes for a community. They are also formulated to guide healthcare organizations on how to balance competing needs with healthcare priorities.
Competing needs impact the development of policy in an organization to guide the allocation of healthcare resources. Policies are required to dictate how financial resources will be allocated, which is a key part of managing competing needs (Holecki et al., 2018). For instance, a policy can be formulated that requires the allocation of unlimited resources where they are most needed and then allocation to reusable resources. The management of competing needs influences the development of an organizational policy that dictates which needs are satisfied first.
Specific Competing Needs That May Impact Physicians and Nursing Shortage
The workforce needs may impact the national healthcare issue on physicians and nurses’ shortage. The workforce accounts for the greatest percentage of recurrent health expenditure in healthcare settings (Nancarrow, 2015). Gradually, shortages in the healthcare workforce correspond with the increasing demands on the healthcare system and continuing growth in healthcare expenditure. Physicians and nurses’ shortage not only limit healthcare accessibility but are crucial factors in patient care quality and safety (Marć et al., 2019). Accessible health services require sufficient numbers of physicians and nurses to meet population needs. However, there are various reasons that the physicians and nurses do not meet population needs, which are primarily from workforce shortages.
Physicians’ and nurses’ shortage is distinguished in four concepts: professional standards, projected future, static economic, and dynamic economic shortages. The common cause of the shortage is attributed to the professional standards shortages (Marć et al., 2019). This concept evaluates the level by which actual nurse staffing falls short of the desired level as per the profession’s preexisting standards.
Impacts and How Policy Address These Competing Needs
Health policy on a flexible workforce may address the competing human resource needs. A flexible workforce can enhance healthcare accessibility by guaranteeing timely responses to physicians and nursing shortages (Nancarrow, 2015). It can help solve workforce shortages and enhance patient-centered care. For instance, a policy can be formulated, eliminating the lengthy and expensive training regimes used to train most health professionals. Most health practitioner courses require students to undergo several hundred hours of supervised clinical training, which are often expensive for students, training institutions, and supervisors (Nancarrow, 2015). A policy can be enacted that entails a change from the time-based achievement of qualifications to the incremental achievement of specific competencies.
Flexible training models can be introduced, such as step-on, step-off programs, which allow for the incremental credentialing of practitioners by offering several exit point