Policies implemented in most healthcare organizations can highly influence nursing shortages in most of the organizations. One of the organizational policies in most healthcare facilities directly influencing the nursing shortage is the policy of hiring only short-term contractual employees (Maleki et al., 2021). This contractual agreement between employees and the organization does not exceed five years, and after this, employees must renew their contracts if they wish to continue working for the organization. In most healthcare organizations, no permanent employees fully benefit from the status. Organizations place such a policy on their strategic plan to save on cost and spend less on human resources as they think long-term employees are more likely to request better payment than a recruit fresh from college. Hiring short-term contractual employees makes nurse shortages an everlasting drawback in most healthcare organizations (Serneels & Lievens, 2018). This policy affects not only the effectiveness of healthcare service delivery but also the quality. In a perpetual shortage of nurses, there is perennial non-compliance with the professional standards of nursing practice outlining the amount of work a nurse can comfortably handle. An organization must implement policies that positively influence the nursing shortage rate to improve patient outcomes.
The bioethical principles of beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice demand that all patients to handle in such a way that only good is done to them, no harm to them, and fairness is exercised. These principles can be disrespected when policies encouraging and facilitating nurses to leave an organization for better employees are implemented. Clinical tasks may not be completed correctly and promptly due to the low numbers of nurses in any organization, and patients may miss their medication timings, especially those in insulin and may even go into life-threatening metabolic crises (Gao et al., 2020). This violates beneficence and nonmaleficence as patients are denied the chance to have enough nurses to care for them where no justice is done to them, and fairness becomes non-existent. The only strength of hiring short-term contractual employees is that the new employees are always eager to follow the rules, regulations, and standards of practice compared to those in the organization (McKeown & Pichault, 2021). New employees do not take shot-cuts in delivering care and are compassionate towards the patients as they know their work ethic is observed. This makes the patients get the best care by default and benefit from this situation and the policy. This policy can also have a weakness as it can harm the patients in the long run by way of chronic low quality nursing care and molest the nurse as they can get overworked without commensurate remuneration. This may affect them physically, emotionally, and psychologically to the extent that they may suffer from mental breakdowns leading to admission to the hospital.
The nursing shortage is a grave healthcare stressor or issue, and if not addressed on time, it can bring the operation of a healthcare organization to a triturating cessation. This is clear as the state regulatory authorities, like the nursing boards, do not allow such an occurrence to endanger the safety of patients. Ways of overcoming the stressor may include a change in the organization’s substandard policies, and the organization should implement new and progressive policies, where ethical consideration should be recommended during the review and implementation of the policies.
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