Question

please type your answer

You are a nurse manager hired for a newly created 45-bed oncology unit. Chemotherapy is to be administered by the registered nurses (RNs) who work on the unit. The expected ADC is 40. The clients admitted to the oncology unit have complex health care needs.
Address these questions:

2: What process should you use to establish the staffing needs of the oncology unit? What are the steps of this process?

3: Should variable or fixed staffing be used? Why?

4: Can unlicensed assistive personnel be used safely, effectively, and efficiently on the oncology unit? What tasks could they perform? Who would supervise them?

Answer 1

Nurse staffing varies from institution to institution, depending on many factors, both internal and external. To gain a better understanding of nurse staffing, ratios of nurses to patients, and productivity, a survey was sent to ONS members.

“The goal of staffing each oncology inpatient unit is to ensure patient safety in healthcare delivery“ Nurses are scheduled in sufficient numbers to provide quality and safe care. The staffing mix is a determinant of the safety of the work environment and the safety of patient care. Nurse recruitment and retention efforts are critical to retaining expert staff.”

The American Nurses Association’s principles for nurse staffing suggest that the following factors be identified:

1. Volume of patients
2. Intensity level of the care needed by patients
3. Characteristics of the work environment, including architecture and available technology
4. Experience and expertise of the nursing staff

The support of a multidisciplinary staff is important, she added, as is a facility’s involvement, or lack thereof, in research at the basic-science or clinical level.

Because patient needs are ever-changing, patient classification and acuity systems that are used to track and predict nurse staffing needs can be helpful, and easily understood by nurses when taught appropriately.