The Impact Float Nursing Has on Patient Care

Abstract

Float Nursing, the practice of relocating staff from their speciality unit or ward to other areas of the hospital, to cover personnel shortage, is a strategy that organisations use to cover acute nursing shortages on a daily basis. The practice of float nursing creates the mindset of nurses being interchangeable, solely focuses on creating adequate nurse to patient ratio’s, and neglects the discrepancies in skill set it creates.The purpose of this research was to determine whether float nursing impacts on the quality of care patients receive. The literature reviewed has looked at the emotional effect float nursing has on nursing staff and ways to minimise the associated emotional effects. Literature has also looked at the cost saving factors associated with float nursing. Yet float nursing did not appear to have been studied in relation to the impact it could have on patient care.Float nursing as a short-term solution may have discounted aspects of nursing and safety because nurses are not interchangeable and do not all hold the same skill set and knowledge. Therefore, the aim of this study was to describe the impact float nursing has onpatient care.