MANAGMENT,LEADERSHIP - Essay Example

nt which affects the quality of services and patient care (as a rule, patient satisfaction level is inversely proportional to reliance on temporary staff); c) it causes difficulties for planning recruitment and off duty. The reasons of sick leaves were different, respiratory, digestive and musculoskeletal disorders being the major named, but the causes were unclear all the same. However, it is evident that such factors as stress, high work load and physical nature of the job are a part of the picture.

Work place injuries such as needle stick injuries and severe back strain are usual reasons of sick leaves (BBC News, 2005). Proper medication management and special programs should reduce the level of sickness and absence. In 2002 NHS undertook a number of initiatives to provide the staff with flexible and family friendly working that were supposed to lessen the rate of sickness absence, reduce the level of stress. Some of them were: flexible working hours, including flexible part-time and job share; corporate childcare voucher scheme, when a part of salary is exchanged for childcare voucher; discount and emergency childcare scheme – agreement with a number of nurseries; holiday club – holiday childcare for small children, and family leave – up to ten days unpaid leave for family crises (York Hospital NHS Trust).

However, the later figures proved that the program didn’t resolve the problem. Audit Scotland (2007, pp. 4-5) recommend that when planning the off duty for NHS nursing staff it is necessary to build an additional time into the staffing requirements to cover annual and study leave, sickness absence and maternity leave, and the protected time for the nursing staff with team leadership responsibilities. The sufficient staff should be contained to allow for these kinds of predictable absence (predictable absence allowances).

Insufficient PAAs cause pressure on the contracted staff, budgets (when temporary or overtime staffing is needed) and affect the