Census
The number of days each patient is in the hospital, determined by dividing the total number of patient days by the total number of admissions.
What is average length of stay (ALOS)?
The process of determining a set number and type of staff for a future time period by assigning individual personnel to work specific hours, days, or shifts and in a specific unit or area over a specified period of time.
What is scheduling?
A written financial plan aimed at controlling the allocation of resources.
What is a budget?
The costs or prices of activities undertaken in the organization's operations.
What are expenses?
The execution of an action. Something accomplished. The fulfillment of a claim, promise, or request.
What is performance?
The number of inpatients on any given day, calculated by dividing the number of patients cared for per day over a certain period by the number of days in a period. May be actual or budgeted.
What is average daily census (ACD)?
A function of education and competency for the job. Measured by the licensure or certification of a staff member.
What is skill level?
An evaluation of the effect of nurse staffing on quality, patient, financial, and organizational outcomes.
What is staffing effectiveness?
Income or amounts owed for purchased services or goods.
What is revenue?
Evaluating the work of others. The process by which a manager 1) examines and evaluates an employee's work behavior by comparing it with preset standards, 2) documents the results of the comparison, and 3) uses the results to provide feedback to the employee to show where improvements are needed and why.
What is a performance appraisal?
The number of nursing staff hours that are assigned to provide direct care to a patient or groups of patients for a specified period; the most common are the RN, LPN/LVN, and UAP. Typically calculated per patient dy or nursing hours per patient day (NHPPD).
What are nursing direct-care hours?
The range of types and levels of ability and preparation in the workforce. The proportion of direct-care RNs to the total direct-care nursing staff; expressed as a percentage of RNs to total nursing staff. Typically budgeted for at the patient care unit level but must also be examined at the shift level during the scheduling process.
What is skill mix?
The patient care plus non-patient care activities (direct or indirect) performed by a nurse and includes the time, complexity of skill mix, patient dependency, and severity of illness (intensity in terms of effort required) of the work a nurse performs within a given period. Typically measured by units of service.
What is a nursing workload?
The excess of revenues over expenses, or revenues minus expenses.
What is income or profit?
The aspect of performance appraisal whereby employees do self-assessments of their own perceptions about their performance compared with stated objectives and expectations.
What is self-evaluation?
Referred to as a churn or turnover of patients, it is also associated with increased care or workload to meet the standard of care for the pt and with safe and effective RN-to-RN communication or handoff regarding the patient's condition and plan of care.
What is Admissions, discharges, and transfers (ADT)?
Lists the total number of direct-care staff by skill level scheduled for each day and each shift.
What is staffing pattern?
A process that determines needs, links to the strategic plan, recruits and selects qualified applicants, and meets the needs of the organization by ensuring that there is appropriate, sufficient, qualified, and competent staff.
What is human resources staffing strategy?
The difference between the budgeted and the actual amounts. It may be favorable or unfavorable relative to the budget amount.
What is a variance?
The process by which nurses systematically access, monitor, and make judgments about the quality of nursing care provided by peers as measured against professional standards of practice.
What is peer review?
A structured approach to the process of identifying and allocating unit-based personnel resources to optimize care needs, quality outcomes, and effectiveness.
What is a nurse staffing management plan?
The process of identifying and allocating nursing staff on a shift to a patient care area. Typically a daily operations function. A match of RN expertise with the needs of the recipient of nursing care services in the context of the practice setting and situation. Necessary to reach safe, quality outcomes; is achieved by dynamics, multifaceted decision-making processes that must take into account a wide range of variables.
What is nurse staffing?
The planning of staffing predicted by predicting the future state of a system and this is highly dependent on describing its current state. The ability to analyze demand is a powerful means to describe and understand the behavior of the system.
What is optimizing a staffing strategy?
Result of multiplying the volume of services provided by the charges (rate) for the services.
What are the total operating revenues?
A formal performance action plan that is used as a tool to facilitate conversation in the form of constructive discussion between a staff member and his or her manager/supervisor in order to clarify work performance and needed improvements. Outlines specific goals to work toward and specific improvement steps to take.
What is a performance improvement plan (PIP)?