Question

You are the nurse manager on a large unit that has 14 FTE RNs on staff, 25 FTE LPNs, and 15 FTE nursing aides, orderlies, and clerks. The schedule for the next 2 months is due in administration by next week, and you are beginning to work on it. Various requests have been submitted by personnel for vacations, educational conferences, time to attend a wedding, and long weekends, and a request from one nurse asks not to be rotated to weekend evenings or nights because her husband bowls on weekends, and she has no babysitter for their three young children. Then answer the following questions: o What types of additional information do you need to complete this schedule? o How do you honor requests as submitted? What if two of the requests for vacations came from RNs scheduled to work the same weekends, and they both asked for exactly the same days off? o How do you inform staff whether their requests have been honored? Are they informed by seeing the posted schedule? o Are requests taken in the order in which they are received? Or do you have another means of honoring requests? Provide your responses on an APA formatted paper.

Answer 1

1. The additional information that is needed to complete this schedule is that whether all these requests are real or not and how many total staffs are available for duty .

2. Requests are honoured in the following order :-

- one nurse asks not to be rotated to weekend evenings or nights because her husband bowls on weekends, and she has no babysitter for their three young children.

- educational conferences

- vacation

- attending a wedding

- long weekends

3. If the two RNs scheduled to work takes the vacation in the same weekend and same day then the incharge should ask the RNs to take vacation on two different days so that patient care is not affected and to avoid negligence and malpractice.

4. Staffs are informed by posting schedule, if their requests are honoured or not the incharge should inform them personally when they are on duty about the status of their vacation . Whether they will be given off or not or there are any changes etc.

5. Yes ,the request is taken in the order in which they are received .