It is well known how nurse shortage is impactful on healthcare industries. In any hospital, nurses are one of the highest-paid and most required positions. The need and importance for a nurse are high due to excessive overtime and the stress associated which raises prices twice. Generally, people who are tried tend to make more errors, and exhausted nurses make mistakes that can have serious consequences for the patients they treat.
Nurse scheduling - Shift Planning
Nurse scheduling is a hard task. But there are further restrictions ahead instead of just slotting workers into timeslots, including:
- Laws concerning the number of hours a nurse can work in a week
- Regulations on the amount of rest needed between shifts
- Shifts continue longer than required, which decreases the time available for rest before the next available shift lead to the need to provide 24/7 coverage
Manual scheduling
Manual scheduling is time-consuming. It takes time to prepare the schedule and it is not possible to create more weeks of nurse shift planning. Nurses need to be aware of their schedules earlier to balance their personal and professional life.
One issue linked with manual scheduling comes from the tendency to unintentionally penalize some individuals. Humans cannot automate and work on scheduling more nurses in shifts. Imagine proving and organizing shifts for 4 nurses. Manually, we might end up repeating shift patterns for nurses and cause errors.
It might cause some nurses to work overtime or end up working on night shifts more than others.
Nurse Staffing in the United States
According to American Nurse Today, various scheduling methods should be avoided:
- Serving more than three continuous 12-hour shifts, four consecutive 10-hour shifts, or five consecutive 8-hour shifts
- Rotating shifts (from days to nights or vice versa) within the same 24-hour period
- Except for 12-hour shifts, rotating shifts with less than twice the number of hours of a standard shift in between
- Excessive continuous hours (for example, a 16-hour double shift)
- Overtime
These practices should form the basis of a set of limitations for any balanced nurse scheduling system.
Why choose Floatcare Scheduling?
Patients are waiting to care for, dozens of clinical services needed to be managed. All the medical duties cannot be kept waiting and unorganized healthcare management can lead to a cost-effective result. Scheduling is an important part of health care as it helps in scheduling shifts, shift planning, maintaining records and timesheets, etc for medical staff. Also, scheduling is important as it affects the personal lives and goals of everyone on your team and your expertise to draw and retain the best people. Therefore scheduling should be fair, quick, and accurate. This is exactly what Floatcare scheduling offers.
Following are the features of Floatcare scheduling
Eliminate Burnout
Float Care is on a goal to reduce burnout by connecting, simplifying, and organizing the lives of medical professionals.
Eliminate Additional Costs
To achieve the quality of care, the right nurse-to-patient ratios are needed. As a result, overtime and high supplemental staffing may remove staffing budgets. With Floatcare scheduling features like shift swapping can help facilities stay within budget.
Reduce Time Spent On Scheduling
Scheduling can be time-consuming. Floatcare scheduling offers automated and user-friendly methods which reduce the time spent on scheduling.
Inefficient Care
Avoid low quality of care by reducing burnout amongst your healthcare staff.
Expired Credentials
Update staff about credentials nearing expiration dates to stay in compliance.
Overworked Staff
Float Care’s scheduling algorithm allows you to use your staff most efficiently.
Shift Suggestions
Float Care’s algorithm sufficiently utilizes your staff without overworking.
