A nurse is busy and forgets to do something, and the patient's family is upset. What should the nurse do?

• A. Apologize and explain delays.
• B. Advocate for better staff.
• C. Blame the system.
• D. Ignore complaints.

Answer: (B)

When caregiving is affected by workload, advocating for adequate staffing is essential to protect patient safety and ensure timely, quality care. This means raising awareness with administrators or supervisors about current staffing levels, distribution of tasks, and workload challenges so that appropriate changes can be made. Addressing these systemic factors helps prevent similar delays in the future and supports the entire care team, not just the individual nurse involved.

Sincere apologies and explaining delays are important for transparency and maintaining trust with the family, but they don’t fix the underlying resource issues that contribute to the problem. Blaming the system can be unhelpful or deflect responsibility, and ignoring complaints fails the professional duty to respond to concerns. By advocating for better staffing, the nurse takes a proactive step toward safer, more reliable care for all patients.