Identify and describe at least two competing needs impacting your selected healthcare issue/stressor. Describe a relevant policy or practice in your organization that may influence your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
Analysis of the Pertinent Healthcare Issue-The COVID-19 Pandemic
Section One: Analysis of the Pertinent Healthcare Issue
Healthcare institutions have a legal and moral obligation to provide quality healthcare to patients and people in need. Healthcare facilities should be adequately equipped with staff, equipment, and finances to accomplish this objective (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2011). Employment concerns should be kept to a minimum to maintain optimal employment partnerships. However, due to higher employment problems, this vision of a working environment is usually speculative. Many concerns are so prevalent that they are considered national healthcare problems or stressors (Marshall, 2010). This paper will address the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the healthcare environment as a national healthcare problem having a negative impact on performance effectiveness and possible intervention programs suggested in scholarly articles.
COVID-19 and the Impact on the Healthcare Organization
The COVID-19 pandemic brings to light the massive worldwide disparities and difficulties we all face. The attention on COVID-19 in healthcare facilities drastically decreased overall accessibility to standard medical services. Some facilities limited or stopped providing quality health services or were stressed with treating COVID-19 patients with acute signs and symptoms of respiratory diseases (Cui & Lee, 2020). The key result is that several countries’ healthcare services have been entirely or partially interrupted. Many surveyed countries (53%) have partially or completely interrupted care for hypertension management; 49 percent have interrupted treatment services for diabetes and complications related to diabetes; 42 percent have disrupted cancer treatment services; and 31 percent for cardiovascular disease emergency services. Rehabilitation care has been interrupted in nearly two-thirds (63%) of the countries, even though rehabilitation is critical to a successful recovery following the COVID-19 illness (Cui & Lee, 2020).
The pandemic’s fast-spreading rate posed problems for healthcare organizations. It compelled healthcare practitioners to deal with medical and non-medical stressors such as a lack of personal protective equipment, morbidity and mortality affiliated with COVID-19, the worries of infecting friends and family, and the actuality of losing workmates to the illness. Previous outbreak evidence and initial proof from the COVID-19 outbreak imply that such occurrences have considerable long-term and short-term consequences on healthcare workers’ mental health. Some healthcare organizations developed short-term and long-term programs to support employees’ mental health during and after the COVID-19 outbreak.
For example, in my organization, due to the increased COVID-19 cases, we were compelled to use the initial outdated ICU, which lacked storage, enough working space, essential supplies, and equipment for patient care. Besides, there was an increased workload that led to nurse burnout. Moreover, the organization transferred nursing staff from regulated areas to other fields such as ICUs to fight shortages and increase patient capacity. As a result, this exacerbated stress by putting non-ICU nursing staff in an unfamiliar environment where they lacked sufficient qualifications and skills to care for ICU patients.
Review of COVID-19 from Two Scholarly Articles
According to Jiang et al. (2021), for healthcare systems, COVID-19 is catastrophic. The impact of COVID-19 on health services and other contagious and noncommunicable illnesses was studied. The study recorded that during the COVID-19 pandemic, most worldwide healthcare resources, including ventilation systems, protective equipment, and health professionals, were directed toward the preventative measures, control, and therapeutic interventions of COVID-19. This was especially true in the epicenters of disease outbreaks in various countries, resulting in a lack of medical resources and a significant burden on health systems. The scarcity of healthcare resources contributed to increased COVID-19 morbidity and all-cause death rates. Besides, communicable diseases co-epidemics overstretched health services, for instance, the co-epidemics of dengue fever and COVID-19 and co-epidemics of flu and COVID-19. Patients with noncommunicable illnesses, such as diabetes, faced significant stress due to the interruption of medical care and the increased risk of death following the pandemic (Jiang et al., 2021). Elective healthcare treatments were also canceled globally to combat COVID-19. Another issue that both patients and healthcare providers faced was mental health problems.
Moreover, according to Ardebili et al. (2021), the COVID-19 pandemic prompte