3 Tips To Help Your Hospital Handle A Day With Short Staffing
If you help administer the daily operations of a hospital, you likely have a long list of responsibilities to tackle on any given day. But things can be especially hectic if you are understaffed or have a bunch of call offs. The sick and the injured need to be assisted, regardless of how many doctors and nurses you have in the building. If you find yourself short staffed for a day or two, here are a few tips that might help.
1. Add Different Levels of Priority to Different Patients or Tasks
If you want to keep the doctors and nurses that did show up for work focused, you can help them by creating a priority list each day. This is a list that will examine all assignments across all patients in the hospital and rank them according to the level of importance. Emergency room or critical care task will obviously be ranked as High, but once you get out into the rest of the hospital population, things will begin to fluctuate. Be sure to give each staff member a few tasks at each priority level so they don't feel overwhelmed all day long.
2. Put Equipment and Supplies in a Central Location in Each Area
One thing that can take a lot of time for hospital staff each day is running around finding the right supplies for the job for any given patient. If things are feeling a bit scattered, take a bit of time to put all of the most commonly used items in specific place on each floor, even if those items don't usually go in that room. Encourage your doctors and nurses to stock up in between patients or send a team to continuously provide fresh supplies as needed throughout the day.
3. Offer Overtime
Yes, this will hurt the bottom line but sometimes it's the best option. Talk to your managers about offering overtime to doctors and nurses with a day off to try and get enough bodies inside the building. Just be sure you're not working all of your staff members so much that they can't focus on their jobs. Your patients deserve a doctor or nurse who can stay focused and help them through their troubles.
If your hospital is understaffed on a regular basis, it's time to get some outside help. A third-party staffing firm can be hired to help you fill the holes in your hospital staffing. In the meantime, appoint daily tasks and hand out supplies in an efficient manner, and hand out some overtime to the employees you do have if you must. To learn more, contact a company like SOS Healthcare Staffing.