Strategic Staffing: A Comprehensive System for Effective Workforce Planning, Second Edition

Creating Specific Plans in an Uncertain Environment: An Example

Here is an example of what one medical center did to create a staffing strategy for patient care staff in the face of great uncertainty. Note that the approach utilizes several of the techniques just described, not just one. The medical center needed to define staffing requirements (and develop staffing strategies and plans) even though its patient load varied significantly from day to day. It was relatively easy for the center to calculate a staffing ratio that specified the number of patient care staff (e.g., registered nurses) required per patient in a given unit. That was not the problem (some states even mandate or regulate these ratios). The problem was that the center had ...