MEMORANDUM

To: Joyce Schreffler, Administrator, Wood River Village

From: Peter Musu, Charge Nurse, Personal Care Two

Date: April 20, 2013

Subject: Staffing Improvement

Critical thinking and best practices show that working with inadequate staffs risks harm to patients and legal actions against nurses. Survey from patients as well as nurses of Personal Care Two have made it clear that more nurses need to be hired. It has been increasingly difficult for one nurse to care for thirty patients. Patients have also complained of the substandard care they receive as a result of understaffing. Hiring more nurses and nursing assistants will increase patients’ satisfaction and reduce nurses’ frustration.
As you may be aware, the duties of nurses have greatly increased during the past six months. We continue to receive patients even though we have a freeze on hiring of nurses. Most of the patients we receive have complex medical problems. In a typical work day, a nurse is given thirty patients to care for in eight hours contrary to the Policy and Procedure of Wood River Village. Each of the thirty patients has medical conditions ranging from self-care deficit to actively dying. The nurse has to administer medications and treatments to each patient. Sometimes, a patient medication that is scheduled for 9 AM is given at noon because the nurse has so much patients to care for at the same time. This put the patient at risk of complications. Patients constantly complain that they don’t get their showers as schedule. They complained of missing one or more treatments such as wound care or physical assessment. This puts the nurse at risk of legal actions and greatly compromises the integrity of Wood River Village.
To alleviate this problem, the following must be done: hire four additional nurses and four additional nursing assistants, stop accepting new admission of