Factors that Affect Staffing and Scheduling in Healthcare - Essay Example

"Factors that Affect Staffing and Scheduling in Healthcare" is a great example of a paper on the health system.
Staffing and scheduling are key procedures in the health sector and they are also important for the proper delivery of services. Emergency services at the ICU settings require proper staffing and scheduling decisions that cater to activities in such a setting. Nurses must be able to handle all patients’ needs as required by clinical practices.

Factors that affect Staffing and Scheduling

There are factors that influence staffing and scheduling decisions. They include patient acuity levels, productivity from their employees, and workload standard. In ICU, there is a need for consistency in all small units. Acuity systems measure the amount of care required by a patient. In an ICU, nurses are required to provide consistent care (Hobasevich, 2012).

Therefore there is a need to stipulate the number of hours a nurse must spend with a patient in ICU. All nurses must know their emergency practices that a patient needs. Acuity can be used to know how many nurses are required in a particular shift when a patient is in ICU.

The second factor is the workload standard that provides the required time to provide services to patients. In providing service to more severe patients, nurses require more time to finish their workload. An adequate number of nurses can increase the efficiency of patient care and reduce the level of mortality. Patients in the ICU and the flow of nurses in the medical team can be used to determine the workload standard.

Patients require the best productivity in any medical team. Workload standard is influenced by employee productivity that improves the care of patients in ICU and emergency services (Wheeler, Halbesleben, & Harris, (2012). Staff productivity may be improved by having staff prepare for the difficult tasks of dealing with patients in ICU. Such skills include emergency practices for dealing with any cases that may arise. This places such employees at a better standpoint of being successful with their set goals. Feedback programs between management and staff member and training program for staff also increase the productivity levels for employees (Langabeer, 2012),

Applicable workload Standard

The most appropriate work standard for emergency cases in ICU services would be the workload at the job level that depends on the type of nursing care. This standard investigates the effect of workload on burnout and productivity among professionals in Intensive Unit Care. It is appropriate when measuring the workload levels of nurses with different job skills and job titles. This means that nurses in ICU care may have different levels of workload due to differences in factors in ICU.