CN4003 Staffing Plan Paper Sample

Introduction.

Full-time equivalent (FTE) is critical in the conversion of time in hours that several part time employees work for into the hours that full time workers do. It can also be defined as an employee’s designated hours divided by the employer’s hours for a full-time week (Bush et al., 2020). In this scenario, we have a 40-bed in-patient nursing unit with an Average Daily Census of 40 and a proposed staffing ration of one nurse for every six patients during each shift.

CN4003 Staffing Plan Paper Sample

Calculating Nursing Hours Per Patient Day (NHPPD).

The Nursing Hours Per Patient Day (NHPPD) was introduced in 2002 and is a workload monitoring system that ensures demand for care of patients in need of nursing and midwifery services is met while still maintaining the recommended levels of staff (Van et al., 2020 CN4003 Staffing Plan Paper Sample). It can be simply defined as the average number of nursing care hours offered to a patient within a 24-hour time frame. It is calculated by dividing patient days from the total number of productive hours by all available nursing practitioner.

PART I

Converting nurse patient ratio to NHPPD.

Converting the nurse to patient ration into Nursing Hours Per Patient Day (NHPPD) entails dividing the number of hours in a day, 24, by the number of patients attended to by one nurse; in this case six patients.

Number of hours in one day/ number of patients attended to by one nurse =

24/6 = 4 NHPPD.

Nursing unit volume in patient days.

The Average Daily Census (ADC) which is defined as the average number of inpatients attended to throughout the year (Zhang et al., 2017). The product of the Average Daily Census (ADC) and the total number of days every year, approximately 365 days gives us the nursing unit volume in patient days.

Average Daily Census (ADC) x Total number of days per year.

ADC 40 x 365 days = 14,600.

Total NHPPD of the previous year.

The total Nursing Hours Per Patient Day (NHPPD) of the previous year is calculated by multiplying the current Nursing Hours Per Patient Day (NHPPD) of the current year by the nursing unit in volume days.

Nursing Hours Per Patient Day (NHPPD) x Nursing unit volume in patient days.

4 NHPPD x 14,600 = 58,400 NHPPD for the previous year.

Number of FTEs needed to staff the unit.

A full-time equivalent (FTE) is a unit that measures employees in a way that enables comparison among them despite the fact that they may be working for different durations of time each week. To calculate FTE, we take the Nursing Hours Per Patient Day divided by the total number of annual hours for a full time 1.0 FTE.

58,400 NHPPD/ 2080 total annual hours = 28.0 FTEs.

Why is this staffing ratio used?

Nursing staffing ratio is determined by patient acuity, the number of admissions, transfers, rate of discharges, skill and expertise of the staff, the physical layout of the nursing unit and the availability of technology and other resources within the nursing unit (Griffiths et al., 2020). Good nurse patient ratio is critical in providing quality and efficient care. The state of California is the only state that has laws that require certain nurse to patient ratios maintained at all instances within the various units.

Staffing ratio in other units.

The nurse to patient ratio differs within the various units of the same facility. The units in the same facility will most likely have different staffing ratios. In areas of more critical levels of care such as the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit or Neonatal Intensive Care Unit where specialized care is required and the nursing staff spend more time with the patients, the ratio may be 1:2 or 1:3, as compared to areas such as Med Surg Unit that may have a 1:4 or 1:5 staffing ratio (Scruth, 2018).

Calculating Salary Costs.

  1. Determine the salary per year for one RN FTE.

$42.25 per hour x 2080 hours worked each year = $87,880.

  1. Calculate the total salary costs for the entire RN staff to determine your initial professional staff budget for the entire year.

$87,800 x 28 = $2,460,640 staff budget annually.

Importance of budgeting when making staffing decisions.

Budgeting is critical in the estimation of revenue, expenditure planning and is critical in ensuring that the organization does not spend more than was initially planned. When making staffing decisions, it is critical to maintain the staffing level within the planned budget (Taha & Rodríguez-Vega, 2020). It is vital not to exceed the estimated budget so as not to incur losses. It is also important to keep in mind that the acuity can vary consequently translating into a change in the number of staff required for each unit. It is important to keep in mind that when making these budget decisions for staff, the quality of patient care should not be undermined while also ensuring that the staff do not experience burnout due to prolonged working hours.

Creating a Staffing Chart for 4 North Day Shift

4 North Schedule FTE Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
Day Shift 7a-7p
Example RN 0.9 X X X         X X X
K. Barnes RN 0.9 X X X         X X X
H. Keller RN 0.9 X X X         X X X  
J. Jones RN 0.9 X X X         X X X  
A. Hills RN 0.9 X X X         X X X
D. Scott RN 0.9 X         X X X         X X
S. Guyan RN 0.9 X X       X X X         X
J. Williams RN 0.9 X X X         X X X
Z. David RN 0.9 X X X         X X X
M. Williamson RN 0.9 X     X X         X X X
P. Webb RN 0.6 X           X X           X
D. Carey RN 0.3 X             X
(Add or delete RNs as needed)
Total FTEs 9.9 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.8

CN4003 Staffing Plan Paper Sample References.

  • Bush, A. M., Reichard, A. A., Wurzelbacher, S. J., Tseng, C. Y., & Lampl, M. P. (2020). Workers’ compensation claims among private skilled nursing facilities, Ohio, 2001–2012. American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 63(12), 1155–1168. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajim.23193
  • Griffiths, P., Saville, C., Ball, J., Jones, J., Pattison, N., & Monks, T. (2020). Nursing workload, Nurse Staffing methodologies and tools: A systematic scoping review and discussion. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 103, 103487. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2019.103487
  • Scruth, E. (2018). Nurse-patient staffing relationship in the ICU. Critical Care Medicine, 46(10), 1681–1682. https://doi.org/10.1097/ccm.0000000000003327
  • Taha, A., & Rodríguez-Vega, G. (2020). Planning and budgeting. Critical Care Administration, 21–41. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33808-4_2
  • Van, T., Annis, A. M., Yosef, M., Robinson, C. H., Duffy, S. A., Li, Y.-F., Taylor, B. A., Krein, S., Sullivan, S. C., & Sales, A. (2020). Nurse staffing and healthcare-associated infections in a national healthcare system that implemented a nurse staffing directive: Multi-level interrupted time series analyses. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 104, 103531. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2020.103531
  • Zhang, G., Qiao, X., Luo, M., Zhang, W., Wu, X., Yang, H., & Chen, Y. (2017). Effectiveness evaluation model of fixed wing UAV based on the improved ADC model. 2017 IEEE International Conference on Unmanned Systems (ICUS). https://doi.org/10.1109/icus.2017.8278356

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