Derric

Thank you for the guidance. This is incredibly valuable information and we intend to make sure that the individuals that co-author the study will most definitely compensated as you stated. Thank you again. Derric

Right, and I would safely assume the policy of staffing under rather than over is cost-control-centric. If it weren't for this, I would assume that over staffing would be the norm. Could you clarify the idea that staff coverage is not the problem? If this is the case, doesn't the administration's policy to under staff and compensate with floaters actually work then? Then maybe the perceived "shortage" as you mentioned, is actually the result of the frustrations from managing floaters? Would this be an accurate statement? It's not that there's not enough nurses, but it seems like there's not enough because you always have to call out to get more. But in reality, the policy was to always understaff. If this is the case, then the idea is to optimize the process to satisfy the understaffing policy (if you couldn't change the policy). You were on the right track in regards to developing technology. My company actually has technology to tackle this specific scenario, but I wanted to respect the policies on this forum and avoid directly marketing it. Nonetheless, understanding this environment is still valuable for us to make sure we truly understand what's going on.

Thanks for the input! What are your thoughts on real time scheduling? What if you had a process/technology that allowed you to accomplish this? You're absolutely right, planning is far different from reality, and I suspect trying to build predictability may not be the way to go. This is the other aim of wanting to engage the study. Reality is, short staffing would almost be impossible to eradicate (i.e. someone will always get sick and cancel a shift), so why not create an environment that can respond to that real time. If trying to find people to fill shifts will always be a reality, why not optimize that process? Maybe we can always fill shifts as long as we had the tools to do so. Thoughts? Pie in the sky thinking?

Hi there, I'm looking for advice on how to go about creating a study, co-authored by nursing management on the scheduling challenges faced by nursing environments when short staffed. The aim of the paper is to objectively quantify and show how often nursing environments have to deal with being short staff, the reasons and how organizations respond. Any advice on how to approach this? Who I would talk to? The interest in such a study? Thanks. Derric