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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page research paper that discusses how fatigue can impair nursing performance and the danger this constitutes for patient safety. Bibliography lists 10 sources.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khfatnur.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
theyre reporting for duty" (Salladay, 2003, p. 73). If a nurse is on duty while impaired by alcohol or drugs and this becomes apparent to supervisory staff, the nurse will
be relieved from duty and possibly prosecuted. On the other hand, hospitals routinely require nurses to work and remain on duty while their cognitive functioning is impaired, not from drugs
or alcohol, but from fatigue. Nurses are routinely required to work 12-hour shifts, back-to-back shifts, and shifts longer than 12 hours are not a rare occurrence. Studies confirm that fatigue
impairs performance and mistakes are more likely to occur, even fatal mistakes, when people are tired. In 2003, the U.S. government Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report that
castigated hospital management for creating a working environment for hospital nurses that was described as a "breeding ground for errors" (Report, 2003, p. 10). The IOM urged state legislators and
regulators to prohibit the use of 12 hours shifts and the routine use of requiring more than 60 hours per week for nursing staff (Report, 2003). The IOM report indicated
that some nurses routinely work consecutive 12 shifts and some work "double shifts of 16 hours" (Report, 2003, p. 10). Donald M. Steinwachs, chairman of the health policy department at
Johns Hopkins University and member of the IOM research team that authored the report, said that "fatigue was a major cause of mistakes and errors" and that "Long work hours
pose one of the most serious threats to patient safety because fatigue slows reaction time, decreases energy, diminishes attention to detail and otherwise contributes to errors" (Report, 2003, p. 10).
A study conducted by University of Pennsylvania found that nurses were three time more likely to commit a medical error when they had been working longer than 12.5 hours
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