Staffing Matrix and Reflection Essay

The purpose of this assignment is to prepare students to make staffing decisions based on sound financial management principles and compliance guidelines.
Scenario: You are the nurse leader of a 30-bed medical surgical unit and have to account for all staffing, including any discrepancies. Using sound financial management principles, complete the \”NUR-621 Topic 8: Staffing Matrix\” in the provided excel template.
After completing the matrix, compose an 1,000-1,250-word reflection answering the following questions:
Why is it important to use a staffing matrix in your health care setting?
Briefly describe your staffing matrix. How many FTEs (full-time equivalent) on the staffing roster are required to cover daily needs? What units of services or work measurement did you use and why? What financial management principles did you use to determine your staffing matrix? Staffing Matrix and Reflection Essay.
Explain how you adjusted your staffing based on changes in the patient census.
You receive your financial report for the month. You have used more FTEs than what was budgeted for your census. How will you make up the variance? How would you reallocate resources to make up for the variance and still comply with guidelines?
Include two to four peer-reviewed references in your essay, including the textbook.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. Refer to the LopesWrite Technical Support articles for assistance.

Benchmark Information
This benchmark assignment assesses the following programmatic competencies:
MSN Leadership in Health Care Systems
6.4: Apply sound financial management principles to allocate resources within health care organizations.

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Staffing Matrix in Healthcare Setting

Importance of using staffing matrix in a healthcare setting

Staffing matrix is a tool that helps in the understanding of the levels of all the staff groups required in the hospital set up based on the consensus. Nurses use the staffing matrix as a guideline when making adjustments in regards to the patients acuity and needs. In a healthcare setting, a staffing matrix is essential and plays a significant role in the allocation of resources. In many healthcare units, staffing matrices have helped a lot hence ensuring no ambiguity and duplication of resources. The reflection clearly explains the staffing matrix and show how many full time equivalents (FTEs) should be on the staffing board doing the daily routine. Therefore, it explains the units of service users and all the laws of financial management and allocation (Dagestad & Grassley, 2019). Staffing Matrix and Reflection Essay. This helps the health unit have a clear picture of the management of human resource and the development of the unit as a whole. The staffing matrix helps the organization avoid duplication of resources and brings proper allocation of resources and human power.

The reflection on the staffing matrix determines and helps to assign the daily routine in the organization (Kilgore, 2016). It gives clear working schedule and proper assignment of duties and roles to individuals in healthcare. It determines the amount finance to be facilitated to each department hence no excess or wastage of funds. It has proved to do this task excellently and brought better results to the organization. All the financial principles are put into use hence leading to a greater understanding of the different financial allocation to every sector. The people in healthcare won’t complain as the finance and resources would have been allocated accordingly. The matrix helps to improve the patients care quality due to better services from the nurses as the duties are well assigned (Felton, Howard & Osgood, 2018). The matrix enhances teamwork among members hence great achievement of the objectives. The people work as a unit in healthcare.

Description of the staffing matrix

This model has staffed 16 nurses in total from which there will be two are set as team leaders to oversee the work. There is also two other heads of unit health who are referred to as overall leaders of different units during the shift (Dagestad & Grassley, 2019). The nurses work in the variations in which three nurses are responsible for the daytime duties. The three nurses will do the job in three consecutive days before handing the job to another lot of three. The process repeats week in week out. At night the demands are high, and risks are high too and therefore there will be five nurses working in shifts for three days consecutively. The increased number of nurses at night reduces the workload and demands. In addition, the additional nurses will reduce the chances of experiencing work borne out thus giving the patient the most desired services.  Staffing Matrix and Reflection Essay. Now the staffs look balanced and duties carried out as required. Since the implementation of this new staffing approach, the nursing team will produce some appealing results. The quality of care given is also expected to improve since the nurses will manage to take enough time handling a specific case from the patients.

Mathematically the expectations are, thirty per cent falls in the patient due to more excellent teamwork. There is also the probability of zero claim compensations as the work is done to perfection with no problems that will arise after completion of the work (Dagestad & Grassley, 2019). The motivation and proper schedule of the nurses will ensure that there is timely working thus timely delivery no delays. The staff perception of the load is also expected to improve as the objectives will be achieved as required. Most likely, the opinion will increase by 15 percent, which is relatively a good number.  The budget is also expected to shift from unfavorable to favorable, which will lead to significant cost saving. This indicates a proper development and betterment of staff as a whole. The medical errors will also reduce since the healthcare givers will access patient data in better ways thus sending error prevention alerts. The automated coding capability as well as improved documentation will be enhanced making it easy to keep the patient information safe and accessible.  In addition, it will be a win win situation for both the surrounding community and the patients since they will receive the best treatment. The hospital will also attract more patients since patient satisfaction and safety will be prioritized. Staffing Matrix and Reflection Essay.

Adjustments based on the changes in patient census

However, there were some adjustments which were done in order to achieve the required staffing. This was done to comply with the budgetary requirements of healthcare (Felton, Howard & Osgood, 2018).  Some resources were at a deficit, and others were in excess hence necessitating the need for adjustments. There was the importance of connecting with key contributors and educating the nurse units on the project.  The nurse units were taught on float and travel; they were also informed assistance and RNs to delegate. There was another problem of insufficiency among the nurses, which made it difficult for nurses to handle the workflow. This brought inconsistency to the teamwork among the staff hence troubling the management. There was a need to adjust the budget and add other nurses which will increase the cost of operation. The nurses were added in order to ease the work hence leading to great achieving by the organization (Felton, Howard & Osgood, 2018). These were among the adjustments made to achieve the goal.

Despite the benefits of staffing matrix, proper planning, improved workflow, there was also an increase in the full-time employee than the budgeted (Felton, Howard & Osgood, 2018). This affected the operation of healthcare and also led to some budgetary imbalance. The resources were not well fit for the available manpower as there was a higher number of FTEs than the available resources. This led to having a higher number of personnel than the available resources. Some nurses never got the time to deal with the patients and hence increasing the wage bill. There was a need to initiate some measures to solve this crisis (Felton, Howard & Osgood, 2018). We opted to create a sanction which will help in laying off some workers. The nurses had surpassed the required number hence need for reducing. This is one of the techniques to apply in order to balance everything in healthcare as expected.

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Reallocation of resources based on the variance

Adequate staffing levels may not be maintained since the patients’ needs keep fluctuating according to the patients’ needs and groupings. Having laid off some nurses, this meant there are reduced expenses that will be used to get other resources of high quality. This is only done after a proper survey of the workflow in healthcare. Staffing Matrix and Reflection Essay. I was performing a routine rounding and auditing before dismissal of some employee fairly to reduce the expense. Acquisition of other equipment will enable the provision of quality service in the healthcare hence proper working of the healthcare. In another way, the healthcare will opt to increase this shift and put some of the FTEs there. This will reduce the expense and proportionally balance the income of healthcare.

In summary, employing the staffing matrix and reflection is very crucial in the organization. This helps the organization achieve its goals with ease and ensure minimal confusion. The human resources are well utilized and no wastage of time (Kilgore, 2016). There is also an aspect of time management, and time was well managed as every activity is properly scheduled and duties assigned accordingly. This has made the organization operate with ease, and each employee works with ease. The FTE is balanced as the matrix spells out the required number hence no underutilization. The matrix ensures no duplication of resource and human resources, leading to the proper allocation of resources.  The use of matrix has led to great accomplishment in healthcare.

References

Dagestad, A., & Grassley, S. (2019). Embracing Change by Moving Forward With an Activity-   Based Staffing Matrix. Journal Of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing, 48(3),    S73. doi: 10.1016/j.jogn.2019.04.126

Felton, K., Howard, C., & Osgood, E. (2018). The evolving role of analytics to determine             hospital risk management staffing. Journal Of Healthcare Risk Management, 38(2), 12-            18. doi: 10.1002/jhrm.21350. Staffing Matrix and Reflection Essay.