Nursing Job Description - Essay Example

These numerous tasks make the head nurse central in ensuring the efficient performance of the team. Thus, this involves financial planning as well in order to ensure that goals are being met. Forecasting is defined as the task of making projections about the future performance on the basis of historical and current conditions data. A head nurse often makes decision regarding the future of his or team. A more appropriate example of this is the amount of budget that the team needs for the coming month.

In order to make projections, the head nurse will rely on the historical data of the actual expenses in the previous months. Based on these records, he or she will then determine which types of expenses will apply in the forecast period as well as eliminate the costs that are be foreseen to be insignificant. Afterwards, he or she also analyzes the factors which will make costs in each individual item higher or lower. In order to do this, he or she will rely on current situation which were not present in the previous budgeting period.

Example is cost of input which drives up prices of materials needed. With these, he or she can then forecast the budget to be appropriated in the next period. Long-range planning is another typical activity of a head nurse. Like forecasting, long range planning is concerned with the future of the team. However, as opposed to forecasting, long-range planning involves the head nurse making decisions according to the strategic goal of the healthcare organization. Long-range planning encompasses both financial and non-financial goals and the focus is always the achievement of a specific objective.

Most companies have embarked on aligning their plans with the overall organizational goal. A head nurse also does this. For example, when the overall plan of the hospital is to transform itself into a state-of-the art organization by utilizing the latest medical technology available in the market, the head nurse prepares his staff for this. Long-range planning may include but is not limited on his efforts to build a program which will enable the members of the team to get acquainted with the new image to be established.

This will include putting up quarterly meetings in order to educate members as well as having appropriate training classes that will equip the members with the skills needed to operate the equipment. As a part of the plan, monitoring will also be installed in order to assess the development and performance of the members of the team. Benchmarking means the process of comparing the performance, policies, philosophies, and other factors of one business organization to the other. These comparisons are often geared in ascertaining how an organization stands in comparison to the other players in the market.

In the setting of the healthcare organization, a head nurse benchmarks when he or she compares the performance of his or her team through a defined metrics. The benchmark often looks at the historical and current performance in order to make an improvement in the future. For instance, a head nurse might want to compare his team's level of performance by the number of times late or