Any Nurse Manager willing to answer some questions?

[bsngirl2015]

Hi, one of my assignments for my class is to interview a nurse manager and my manager is on vacation for the week and I feel emailing her these questions would be an incovenience. I'm going to ask my Clinical Leader to help me answer these questions but I figured I would be proactive and ask on here also! If anyone is willing to help and answer some of these questions I would be grateful! Thank you to all who take the time to look over my post and especially to those who respond!

1. What positions are directly responsible to you?

2. Who are you directly responsible to?

3. How well does the organizational structure support the outcomes desired?

4. What is the budget process for the area you are responsible for?

5. What are the business goals of your organization?

6. How do you measure success?

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

I suspect that the goal of this homework assignment was to have you speak to an actual nurse manager. Getting answers to a list of questions online from people you don't know isn't really fulfilling the spirit of the assignment. Can you ask the manager of a neighboring unit for a few minutes of their time?

[bsngirl2015]

She's on vacation, hence why I talked to my Clinical Leader. My assignment is already done and turned in but I thought I would get others answers on here to further my own knowledge.

[bsngirl2015]

If anyone could share their answers I would really appreciate I'm looking to decide if I want to go the managerial / administrative route in my career and while these questions were for an assignment I've completed I would love to hear others responses

[klone, MSN, RN]

Since you're asking for your own edification, I'm happy to take the time (typically do not answer surveys/questionnaires for homework assignments).

1. Several dozen RNs, one LPN, several CNAs, several unit secretaries. I have around 62 direct reports, which translates to around 26 FTEs, I believe

2. My direct manager is the CNO.

3. Not sure what you mean by "outcomes desired" - facility outcomes, unit outcomes, personal outcomes?

4. I meet once a year in the early spring (just had my meeting last week) with the CFO, CNO, and my "finance partner" which is one of the senior financial analysts assigned to me to create the next fiscal year's budget (FY 2018 begins July 1, as it does in many organizations). They look at last year's volume and productivity to determine if my FTE will increase, decrease, or remain the same. That part is pretty straightforward. I submit a proposal for my non-labor expenses, mainly minor equipment for the unit. I need to justify why I need these items, and hopefully I will have good documentation, solid quotes, etc. The threshold $ amount for this proposal is $5,000 for each line item. Items above $5,000 go through a special application/approval process separate from this budget process.

5. To save money and increase our CMS star rating and HCAHPS scores. That's it in a nutshell.

6. How do I personally measure success, or how does my facility measure my success? For the latter, if I can stay within budget, not have any sentinel events, have good unit HCAHPS scores, then I'm successful. For me personally, if I can keep on top of my emails, keep on top of addressing incident reports, patient complaints, staff complaints, my monthly budget variance reports, my budget narcotics auditor reports, and keep my staff happy and engaged, then I consider it a success. Happy, engaged staff is my most important priority. I believe that if staff are happy and engaged, most everything falls into place, and just needs occasional nudging to keep it on track.