Question

The community has been suffering from a severe nursing shortage made worse by a particularly virulent flu that has affected many of the staff members. Upper management is aware of the severity of the shortage and has decreased the bed census by 20%; only emergency surgery is being performed until the crisis abates. You are considering reassigning a portion of your critical care staff, including dialysis and emergency care nurses, to the general medical and surgical floors because the crisis is most severe on the general units. None of the staff has been cross-trained specifically for the general units.

1. From an ethical standpoint, how would you begin to achieve this task, and what are the ethical principles involved?

2. How would you select which nurses to reassign and which nurses to retain in the unit?

3. Would you involve the nurses themselves in the decision-making process? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Staffing nurses typically is a day off operations function in which designated persons assess to determine the shift to shift ratio of nurses to patients to ensure adequate staffing oneach shift and unit,typically staffing processes dont look further than 24 hours in advance of the shift .So the management should take care in appointing more nurses to avoid crisis situations.With centralised staffing one department is responsile for staffing all units,inclusing call in staff,call off staff or float staff.Nurses who have experience in all the departments are much preferable to retain in the unit and the freshers can be reassigned.Decision making process mainly targets the nurse-patient ratio ,patient acuity including budget based.