Aging workers, burnout, inadequate pay, corporate cost-cutting, hostility toward providers, and the COVID-19 fallout are some of the reasons for a healthcare worker shortage pervading the United States. This means that healthcare professionals, like doctors and nurses, are in short supply in certain regions throughout the American landscape, leaving sick and injured people without vital services. Not only that, the lack of adequate staffing in hospital and medical facilities can allow for medical errors and omissions that lead to serious patient harm. When lack of appropriate staff in a healthcare facility results in an individual’s injuries, worsening complications, or even death, the medical center may be held liable for medical malpractice.
Coming to Grips with the Healthcare Shortages that can Lead to Inadequate Staffing
The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis reports that about 75 million people live in areas with primary healthcare shortages, 58 million have limited dental options, and 122 million have fewer mental health resources. Nurses, in particular, are in short supply at an estimated shortfall of 200,000 annually to fill the industry’s retirement, illness, and burnout casualties.
Unfortunately, there is also a shortage of educators to train nursing students, and the increasing demand for new nursing professionals is estimated at 200,000 per year through 2026 to replace retiring nurses and fill new positions. As a result, patients in healthcare shortage areas see fewer hospital staff members, such as doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, nurse’s aides, physician assistants, midwives, pharmacists, x-ray technicians, physical therapists, optometrists and ophthalmologists, EMTs, medical assistants, psychiatrists, and counselors. As a result, patients may not receive adequate care, ultimately resulting in preventable harm.
Key Services that may be Neglected when Medical Facilities Lack Necessary Staffing
Each healthcare worker provides essential services in diagnosing and treating patient illnesses and injuries.
The Consequences of Fewer Nurses for Patients
For example, fewer nurses means hospitalized patients do not benefit from their services. Nurses care for patient needs, such as dispensing medication, recording patient vitals, tracking patient symptoms and recovery progress, and making patients comfortable. They aid doctors and other staff administering patient healthcare plans and are essential communication lines to patients and their families, informing them about pain and treatment management.
The Price Patients Pay for Not Enough Doctors
Doctors diagnose and treat patients by assessing a patient’s complaints, performing physical examinations, reviewing medical history, ordering tests, interpreting test results, prescribing medication, setting up a treatment plan, and monitoring patient progress. A primary doctor can perform essential in-office treatments, such as setting a fracture, and often refers patients to specialists, physicians who treat specific body areas, systems, or diseases. Their lengthy education and expertise are crucial to ensure patient health and proper care.
The Undue Harm of Medical Staffing Problems
Moreover, supporting medical staff makes healthcare organizations work. They set medical appointments, collect intake forms, maintain patient files, enter patient data in electronic medical records, follow up with patients, support nursing staff, and relay communication between patients, doctors, and other medical staff.
Supporting staff also includes physician assistants who help and stand in for doctors in assessing, ordering tests or medication, and providing essential healthcare. They cannot practice independently and handle complex medical cases or surgeries. Nurse practitioners assist physicians by providing patient support, examination, ordering labs, and the like. They practice under a physician and cannot prescribe medications or handle complex medical cases.
Lab technicians, radiologists, lab managers, and other healthcare personnel handle blood, urine, and other tests, like scans and X-rays. Emergency Medical Technicians, paramedics, and ambulance drivers transport patients to hospitals and clinics and render emergency life-saving services and initial assessments before delivering the patient to hospital physicians. All of these professionals play a pivotal role in protecting the health of patients.
Without enough of them to play their parts, or with too many of them overworked and unable to give 100 percent of the time, attention, energy, and care to each patient, the consequences can be severe.
The Link Between Understaffing and Medical Malpractice
When the web of interconnected healthcare workers breaks down due to shortages, patients suffer the consequences of delayed care delivered by hurried, overworked, unsupervised, and exhausted medical professionals. The potential for mistakes at all levels of care is high in such an environment.
Insufficient staff numbers can cause patient injuries, ranging from minor health issues to massive and even fatal adverse events. Also, poorly trained, hired, or supervised workers can lead to negligent errors that leave patients worse than when they arrived at a healthcare facility. The rush to fill staff vacancies may lead to rushed hiring decisions and inadequate training, resulting in errors due to inexperience and knowledge of job duties. Overworked supervisors may be doing their jobs and others, leaving them no time to supervise new or old hires.
Potential Medical Errors and Negligent Situations that may Arise due to Staffing Shortages
When nurses are scarce, the ratio of nurses to patients may make patient care strained at best and negligent at worst.
Delayed Care and Response Times
Too few nurses and support staff mean delayed care for patients. Some patients need quick responses to pain medication requests, respiratory problems, and other emergencies. Patients may need bathroom help, washing, fever control, or other comfort services that they get late or not at all.
Lack of Monitoring
Staff shortages especially hurt very ill or post-surgery patients who need careful and frequent monitoring for vital signs, infection, or medication adjustments. Patients with life-threatening conditions in the intensive care units need adequate nursing and support staff to monitor their condition and alert an ER doctor promptly. Nurses and assistants must regularly check patient vitals and medical device readings to inform treating doctors. A patient’s decline may go unnoticed for too long without proper monitoring. It could mean life or death, complications, or a worsened condition for a fragile patient.
Mistakes with Medicine
Nurses, physician assistants, nurse assistants, physicians, and pharmacists routinely prescribe, prepare, and deliver medications to patients. Hospitals, clinics, urgent care, and other healthcare facilities with staffing problems are prone to errors, some catastrophic. Handling too many patients on a shift, each of these healthcare providers can make mistakes by prescribing the wrong medication, failing to check a patient’s chart for drug allergies, misreading the prescription and bottling the wrong, or administering the wrong dose to the patient, which could result in patient injuries.
A patient’s condition can deteriorate when they do not receive the correct medication or dosage. A tired nurse may misread a physician’s or pharmacist’s instructions on medication administration, which could diminish the effect of the medicine. And allergic reactions can be fatal when overworked doctors, pharmacists, and nurses give the patient the wrong medication. Moreover, a patient may suffer extreme complications, including anaphylactic shock, when they ingest drugs that they are allergic to, and no one comes to their rescue soon enough.
Uptick in Falls
Hospitalized patients seek care for illnesses and injuries, some debilitating, as with near-fatal car accidents, including terrible concussions, broken bones, lacerations, and spinal or disk injuries. Such patients need time-consuming help as they recover to get to the hospital’s bathroom, shower, or rehabilitation center. Staffing shortage inevitably leads to falls when unassisted patients get out of bed, faint, dizzy, and weak, or fall out of bed when safety rails lower. Falls are primary sources of bruises, fractures, sprains, and concussions.
Deterioration of Patients’ Conditions
Neglected patients fall but also suffer extreme discomfort or injuries from going unbathed, lying in soiled linen, or prone for too long. Patients develop infections from wound care neglect or infrequent washing. Moreover, bed-ridden patients need turning, or they can develop painful bed sores that can get infected, a dangerous condition for already vulnerable patients. Finally, neglected patients may not get regular or timely meals. Weak patients who do not eat enough do not recover well, are susceptible to infection and may deteriorate.
Infections also result from shoddy hygienic and sterilization protocols. Rushed medical staff may skip cleanliness, a key component to infection control, which can severely complicate a patient’s condition. Patients with compromised immune systems are especially vulnerable to contracting and suffering severe complications from hospital-acquired infections.
Contributing Factors to Inadequate Staffing in Hospitals and Other Healthcare Centers
Many reasons account for healthcare shortages, the most prominent being burnout. Healthcare workers are constantly pressured to perform their jobs competently, as mistakes are costly. Doctors and nurses work long hours, sometimes without breaks, on busy nights at the ER. Add to that the trauma of the massive influx of severely ill and dying patients and restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, together with the hostile backlash. It is no wonder many healthcare professionals left the profession.
Some leave the healthcare profession due to for-profit corporate cost-cutting and low pay for nurses and administrative staff. Companies that watch the bottom dollar may not pay well and skimp on important things like healthcare training. When the job means low wages, stressful work, and stunted opportunities for personal growth and career development, nurses, administrators, and others opt out of the healthcare industry.
For others, the intense work and long hours may cause healthcare providers to cut back or retire to achieve work-life balance, especially those with young families. In other cases, nurses, doctors, and other providers retire after a long career.
Suing Liable Parties when Staffing Shortages Lead to Patient Harm
Understaffed hospitals can be responsible for medical injuries and patient deaths when they fail to provide the standard of care they are obligated to provide. This failure is considered medical malpractice. All medical professionals and hospitals are held to a standard of care in diagnosing and treating patients. The standard is measured by what other competent medical professionals with comparable education and training would do under similar circumstances.
When a doctor, nurse, technician, or other professional makes mistakes that other similarly situated professionals would not make, resulting in patient harm, they may be liable to the injured patient who suffers from such negligence. Though negligent individuals are liable for the injuries they cause, the hospital they work for may also be vicariously liable under the doctrine of respondeat superior.
A hospital is responsible for the negligence of one of its employees performing their prescribed duties (acting within the scope of their employment) when the negligence occurs, and the hospital is somehow responsible for negligent hiring, inadequate supervision, or insufficient training. So, when inadequate staffing leads to a patient injury, medical complication, worsened condition, misdiagnosis or mistreatment, or death, a hospital may be liable for the unsafe conditions that led to the injury, complication, or fatality.
Injured Due to Low Healthcare Staffing in NJ? Call Us
Negligence is the basis of a medical malpractice action. So, when hospital understaffing leads to your injuries or your loved one’s death in New Jersey, be sure to consult a renowned medical malpractice attorney at Fronzuto Law Group. With our lawyers’ expansive knowledge and experience in this complex legal area, we know how to prove hospital negligence based on individual and systemic substandard practices. We can investigate, link, and successfully articulate how the individual error resulted from the hospital’s understaffing issue, connecting it directly to your injuries.
Knowing the laws of negligence and respondeat superior and how to prove the elements of negligence with direct and circumstantial evidence, our talented medical malpractice attorneys are prepared to assist with your case to reach the optimal outcome and recover just compensation. We are highly skilled at evidencing the causal chain, beginning with the lack of staff that causes the conditions for mistakes due to overwork, fatigue, and inadequate training and supervision. We can show how workers in understaffed facilities cannot do their jobs well or at all, leading to patient-harming lapses and errors.
When you contact us, our legal team can take you through the steps of building an air-tight case, beginning with hearing your story and gathering documentary, physical, and testimonial evidence as proof supporting your right to a financial recovery for damages. Contact us today at 973-435-4551 for a free consultation with one of our attorneys. We are ready with the skills to see your medical malpractice claim due to staffing problems from the initial meeting through trial.