Angeles University Foundation Angeles City

Determining Staffing Needs: The Workload Intensity Measurement System

Submitted By: Carl Elexer C. Ano BSN IV 11

Submitted To: Mary Angelica P. Bagaoisan R.N., M.A.N.

February 19, 2010 REACTION:

Staffing as a task of a nurse manager plays a vital role in rendering effective, efficient and quality nursing care among their patient through proper allotment of nursing and non nursing staff to their patients. Throughout time Patient Classification system is used to make effective staffing, but then again, the needs of the people are very dynamic that throughout time, theyre nursing needs are also changing and becoming more demanding, therefore the traditional Patient Classification System needs innovations too.

As a response to this Hoi, Ismail, Ong and Kang made a research study on how they are going to improve staffing through the workload intensity or simple words, it is depending on the patients need. Comparing the method and system used by the researchers and with the traditional Patient Classification System, the two systems have similarities in term of the process on determining the nursing care hours needed. The major difference of the two systems is that the latter consider the type of hospital while in the Workload Intensity Measurement System they use a more specific determinant through individualized need of the patient and the problems identified.

From the studys finding it shows that the existing measurement systems has potential validity problems as activity times derived from the early 1990s would not probably be applicable in todays clinical setting. In todays clinical setting, evidence based nursing is indeed one of the best ways to improve the quality of health care. Scholarly analyzing the current health care situation, there is a marked change in the nursing activities thus reflecting a change in the roles of the nurses from the past decade. Nurses nowadays are also involve in various communication with other professionals wherein a significant proportion of their time is being spent thus inclusion of this activities or function of the nurse must be taken into consideration in computing for the nursing care hours needed of the patient.

Collectively, as a future nurse I would suggest that patient classification system must be reviewed periodically in a rapidly changing and complex work environment, and as much as possible the use of fixed nurse patient ratio must be limited and use a more individualized staffing measurement. Based from the results of the study it shows that an observation study must be conducted in an institution to reflect the actual staffing needs of that specific institution, in which this would help minimize the lawsuits being filed due to negligence as a result of understaffing.