Heavy Workload of Nurse

Nowadays, nurses are able to handle both clinical and administration duties. The nurse-patient ratio in Hong Kong is 1:12. Some RNs used words “ridiculous”, “impossible” and “more than an average person can handle,” to describe their current workload. This report mainly focuses on how the heavy workload of hospital nurses is a major problem that adversely affects patient outcomes.
Heavy nursing workload contributes to high turnover and the nursing shortage. Nurses are expected to perform nonprofessional tasks such as delivering and retrieving food trays; transporting patients; and ordering, coordinating, or performing ancillary services. These tasks increase nurses’ workload undoubtedly. Some senior nurses will plan to leave their job or assign within a year because of heavy job demands. The first dimension is that there is an overall lacks of nurses, the second dimensions is there is a lack of experienced nurses. As a result, due to a temporary shortage between experienced nurse and new graduates, junior nurses and new graduates do not have enough experience and confidence when they are entering into the nursing field. This may lead to poor quality of hospital care and poor patient outcome.
Excessive workloads also causes fatigue and contribute to their making errors. Under heavy workload, more errors are detected in hospital on days when nursing workload is higher. Nurses do not have insufficient time to perform tasks safety, they have less time to assist us in detecting those errors, for example, nurses may forget to double check the medication; therefore, the chance for errors is increased. Besides, high workload will influence the nurses' decision to perform various procedures in order to bring about poor job performance and job dissatisfaction. When they reduce the attention devoted by a nurse to safety-critical tasks, thus increasing the risk of patient care , it is dangerous to patients
Furthermore, over workload can be a major factor contributing to...