Staff and Scheduling in Nursing Care Management - Assignment Example

? Staff and Scheduling in Nursing Care Management of Introduction Nursing Care Management refers to the process of the leadership duties of governance and making decisions in organizations that offer nursing care. These duties include; organizing, planning, directing and staffing. It is therefore a field that requires deep knowledge of management and possession of people skills. However, this essay dwells on the aspect of staffing and scheduling in nursing care as a function of management. Administrators in Nursing care management are faced with challenges of how to recruit and schedule staff in an era of increasing job vacancies and low nurse turnover numbers that currently averages about 21% (Seifert, 2000). Scheduling and staffing in nursing care management is an aspect of management that poses a lot of challenges to managers. Formulating strategies to achieve the goal of bringing new nurses to the nursing profession and scheduling already recruited nurses is quite important to the profession. Employing forceful and well-researched scheduling tactics will tap the skills and competencies of qualified workers to the profession and on the right jobs (Seifert, 2000). After employing a new workforce, efforts must be taken to properly schedule the current nurses on the basis of their wealth of knowledge and expertise which are vital for assisting and developing trainee nurses into experts and sustaining qualified service delivery. The reason this topic is chosen is the negative physical and mental health consequences of poor scheduling on overworked health care employees. In addition, poor scheduling results in domestic problems as employees have little or no time for families and friends. Finally, low morale in employees due to overwork and lack of understanding and consideration from managers and administrators results in reduced productivity (Chin, 2008). This essay discusses the modern trends in staff and scheduling strategies as well as the challenges that these process pose to the management. Finally, it provides research based recommendations on how to solve problems of staff and scheduling in nursing care management. Implications of Staff Shortage on Scheduling Staffing plays a rather critical role in the operation budget of health care facilities. In fact, for many health care facilities, it has been established that up to between 50% and 70% of operation budget goes to staffing issues. It is thus a counterproductive trend or practice to ignore or underestimate the necessity of effective and efficient staff management strategies and nurse scheduling processes (Buchanan, 2002). In general, staffing and scheduling strategies and practices should not result in uncalled for overtime, lopsided caseloads and even staff suffering exhaustion. As is generally understood, unhappy or discontented staff implies unproductive and unprofitable business (Buchanan, 2002). For optimal staff scheduling practices that would yield happy and contended nurses, it is of the essence that a balance is struck between resident perceptions and the skill levels of the nurses in question (Buchanan, 2002). Importantly, health care managers should ensure that staff schedules are tightly connected to the needs and populations of the clients to be attended. Managers should be consistent in their scheduling, considering that no single nurse would want to work on holidays and every other weekend. Thus, there should not be any indications of favoritism in staff scheduling. This fairness would ensure no employee grumbles given that employees are the greatest asset that a health care facility may have. In addition, it pays for health care managers who ensure their nurses and other staffs are happy as this happiness would translate to better care and improved client outcomes (Buchanan, 2002). Numerous challenges are often encountered in staff scheduling, staff shortage being a key challenge. There is a wide spread shortage of registered nurses (RNs) in many countries including The United States of America. Experts in the field of healthcare management attribute this shortage to several reasons. First, currently, slightly more than a third of all working nurses are aged at least 50 and a mass retirement of nurses is anticipated in large in the next decade. Dating as far back as 2003, the registered nurses (RNs) job vacancy rate was already at 15%, a figure that is projected at 20% by 2020. This section is dedicated to investigating causes for the shortage of nurses in health care management (Seifert, 2000). First among the factors that have led to the acute shortage of nursing staff are the poor working conditions that nurses are subjected to in most healthcare facilities. These conditions include patient overload, lack of proper equipment and protective gear, and long working hours; factors that leave nurses feeling physically and emotionally drained (Chin, 2008). As a result, most nurses opt to leave the profession in search for alternative employment. The current shortage is made more severe by nurses abandoning the profession due to lack of satisfaction with the roles assigned to them in the clinical setting (Chin, 2008). Research indicates an increased job dissatisfaction across the nation caused by stress and one in every five nurses plan to leave the field within the next five years This aspect of the problem therefore lies with staff scheduling and not. Other factors that have contributed to the present shortage include low payments that do not appreciate the kind of work that nursing staff do, leading to mass resignation of nurses. Nursing schools are also not producing enough graduates to meet the market demand. This factor has resulted in low enrolments of nursing students and low number of educators too. With the global economic meltdown recently witnessed, nursing staff care also faced staff downsizing to cut costs of running health institution, leading to a reduction in the number of nurses (Levsey et al., 2007). These effects trickled down to nurse scheduling where more nurses are assigned night, holiday, and weekend duties not to mention longer shifts (Chin, 2008). Hospital authorities attribute the acute shortage of nurses to increasing career opportunities for women in other fields, leaving the hitherto women -career without inadequate staff and scheduling problems. Putting all these factors into consideration, it is therefore important that nursing care management puts in place measures that will ensure proper staff scheduling. Scheduling of Staff in Nursing Care Management The current nurse shortage crisis coupled with the need for more personalized care for patients are important factors that must be considered by healthcare administrators as they try to balance patient and staffing needs. There are a number of scheduling initiatives that can be taken to assist in alleviating the shortage of staff in nursing care management. First, healthcare institutions should offer bonuses on extra or emergency schedules, as a way of luring employees to accept such emergency schedules (LaDou & Tennenhouse, 2011). This will boost the number of employees asking for or accepting such schedules. Second, the nursing profession should foster collaborative work with nursing schools so as to create a link between the world of academia and actual field practice and have clinical nurses visit colleges and schools to raise students' interest in the health care profession. This will eventually help in the hiring of new graduates that could be more than willing to work in whatever schedules they are allocated (LaDou & Tennenhouse, 2011). Other measures include establishing residency programs that target more males into the profession since it has traditionally been labeled as a women’s forte. There are studies that have proven men more effective in some aspects of emergency and tight schedules than women. Lastly, more efficient means of imbursement need to be put in place such as; offering additional payment for every hour worked above normal time, provision annual bonuses that correspond to the duration of a shift, the he level of service that a nurse occupies (LaDou & Tennenhouse, 2011). Having employed nursing staff, and putting into consideration scarcity of the same in the market, hospital administrations must formulate and put into practice measures to ensure scheduling of their current staff (LaDou & Tennenhouse, 2011). This is an intricate process that requires creativity, an in depth knowledge of healthcare management, and the needs of the nursing staff. The first step towards scheduling of nursing staff is to know their needs. To this end, the management must conduct routine surveys to find out what nurses really need in their day to day schedules and if they fit into or support other aspects of their lives (LaDou & Tennenhouse, 2011). Second, leadership is paramount. Nurses need to see tangible support from their administration even when schedules do not favor their other programs. The administration need to make conscious effort such as organize meetings, lunches or annual dinner parties where all stakeholders meet and everybody is introduced. It is only in such forums that the management gets to know the junior employees and the challenges that they face. Conclusion Staffing and scheduling the right people to work for a healthcare organization is the first sure step towards efficient health service provision. Administrators therefore should take measures to sensitize and educate their nurses to adjust according and to be ready for any emergency assignments of duties. These emergencies could include working over the weekend, holidays, late into the night or longer hours. Lamentably, shortage of nurses implies that more serious scheduling issues have to be dealt with. However, once employed, mechanisms must be put in place to schedule employees and sustain service delivery throughout health care facilities. These measures include; redesigning workforce procedures and adopting technology that will improve efficiency, creating a communication system that allows feedback from employees and working on the information given appropriately, offering attractive pay packages, recognizing and rewarding hard work and investing in continually improving the workforce. References Buchanan, J. (2002). "Global Nursing Shortages." BM, 324(7340): 751. Chin, P. L. (2008). Integrated theory and knowledge development in nursing, seventh edition. St. Louis, MO: Mosby. LaDou, D. E., and Tennenhouse, D. J. (2011). "Occupational Health Nursing and the Quest for Professional Authority." New Solutions, 21(1):57–88. Levsey, K. R., Campbell, D., and Green, A. (2007). Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow; Challenges in Securing Federal Support for Graduate Nurses. Journal of Nursing Education, 46(4), 176-183. Seifert, P. C. (2000). “The Shortage.” AORN Journal, 71(2); 310-312. Read More