Nursing

Improving employee job satisfaction and patient care skills CASE STUDY 16-1 224 PART 3 • MANAGING RESOURCES supplemental staffing at a substantially lower cost than external agency nurses. In addition, in- ternal staff are familiar with the organization. All staff participating in the internal float pool must be adequately trained for the type of patient […]

shows how one hospital used open scheduling to decrease its use of agency staff and improve staff morale. Weekend Staffing Plan Hospitals can no longer arbitrarily staff patient care units on weekends or at nights with mar- ginal numbers or levels of qualified staff. The acuity of patients in hospitals, including medical and surgical patients,

STAFFING AND SCHEDULING 221 Medical units usually have the heaviest care needs in the morning hours, when patients’ daily care needs are being met and physicians are making rounds. On skilled nursing and rehabilitation units, care needs are greatest before and immediately after mealtimes and in the evening hours; during other times of the day,

Did the interviewer follow the principles discussed in this chapter? STAFFING AND SCHEDULING 219 Picard and Warner (2007) suggest fine-tuning PCS systems to predict the demand for nursing expertise several days in advance. They complain that basing staffing on immediate patient needs is short-sighted and often results in failure as mentioned above. Their system, called

Requirements for Staffing Systems A reliable and valid staffing plan must: ● Be created with input from direct-care registered nurses ● Be based on the number of patients and patient-acuity level with consideration of patient admissions, discharges, and transfers on each shift ● Reflect the level of preparation and experience of those providing care ●

What are the pros and cons of using this strategy? Patient Classification Systems Patient classification systems (PCSs), sometimes referred to as patient acuity systems, use patient needs to objectively determine workload requirements and staffing needs. To be most effective, patient classification data are collected midpoint for every shift by the unit nursing staff and analyzed

Would you do anything differently now that you’ve read the chapter? A hospital unit may experience a steady census during the seven days of the week or a higher census from Monday to Friday. Its patient days may be distributed evenly during the year, or it may consistently experience peaks in occupancy in certain months

Have you ever participated in a staff interview, either as a candidate or as a member of the staff? MANAGING RESOURCES S taffing and scheduling is an important responsibility of the nurse manager and a critical aspect of providing nursing care. Higher nurse staffing levels reduce mortality in hospi-talized patients (Schilling et al., 2010; Needleman

Imagine that a potential candidate asks you to describe your present workplace. What would you say? Staffing PATIENT CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS DETERMINING NURSING CARE HOURS DETERMINING FTEs DETERMINING STAFFING MIX DETERMINING DISTRIBUTION OF STAFF Scheduling CREATIVE AND FLEXIBLE STAFFING AUTOMATED SCHEDULING SUPPLEMENTING STAFF Staffing and Scheduling 16 1. Determine staffing needs. 2. Demonstrate how to use

What approach does your organization use to recruit employees? Is it effective? Web Resources Job search websites: Monster.com: www.monster.com Nurse.com: www.nurse.com Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing: http://stti.monster.com Nurse’s CareerCenter: www.nursingworld.org/careercenter Aiken, L. H., Clarke, S. P., Sloane, D. M., Lake, E. T., & Cheney, T. (2008). Effects of hospital care environment on