Policy Critique: Ethical Considerations and Strengths and Challenges of the Policy in Promoting Ethics Ethical Considerations

Policy Critique: Ethical Considerations and Strengths and Challenges of the Policy in Promoting Ethics Ethical Considerations

The policy involves adhering to the nurse staffing ratio recommended by nursing associations and other national bodies. The policy supports an increase in the number of nurse practitioners in the healthcare organization through an appropriate nurse staffing ratio. Developing Organizational Policies and Practices.Healthcare workers are required to adhere to the ethical guidelines and professional standards in all their activities and clinical practices. Therefore, nurse staffing to resolve the nurse shortage in the healthcare organization involves some ethical considerations. Nurses have an ethical obligation to protect their patients from any harm during care delivery (Kadivar et al., 2017). Nonetheless, it is challenging for the nurses to meet this ethical requirement due to the nurse shortage in the healthcare organization. Under this situation, nurses are assigned more patients than they can competently handle. Consequently, nurses fail to address the health needs of individual patients adequately. Developing Organizational Policies and Practices.

Strengths and Challenges of the Policy in Promoting Ethics

The policy can promote ethics among nurses since it advocates for strict adherence to staffing guidelines that have been set by ANA and the National Campaign for Safe RN-to-Patient Staffing Ratios. Adhering to these guidelines will ensure that nurse practitioners are allocated an appropriate number of patients depending on the care unit. Consequently, nurses will be able to provide quality and safe care to individual patients, thus protecting them from any form of harm. According to Griffiths et al. (2020), the nurse staffing ratio has an impact on the quality and safety of patient care. However, the policy might fail to promote ethics due to the high cost of hiring new nurses or retaining current practitioners. Protecting patients from any harm requires the healthcare organization to have more nurses, which is costly.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices.