Emergency Room Staffing and Task Analysis: A Discussion

This discussion board post addresses the issue of staffing and task efficiency in an emergency room setting. The author, a nurse, responds to a peer's post and discusses the challenges of limited staffing, particularly during busy periods. The post highlights the potential for tasks, such as room cleaning, to be handled by lesser-paid employees like nurse aides or housekeepers to alleviate the workload on nurses and improve overall efficiency. The author references the challenges of managing multiple emergency cases simultaneously due to staffing shortages and the need for 24/7 operations. The post also references the use of night shifts and how that further impacts the staffing levels. The post references a few papers on the subject of healthcare management and staffing. The author suggests that the addition of support staff could improve the efficiency of the ER and ultimately enhance patient care.

Running head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Name of Student
Name of University
Author’s Note

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Reply to the post of Kenda Soles
I agree with you on the fact that there are certain situations when very less amount of
cleaning staffs are available, hence it becomes very difficult for us to cope up with the pace
of the activities that we are supposed to carry out (Berghout, van Exel & Leensvaart, 2015).
Due to the fact that there no walk in clinic and the overall population of around 8,000, there
are various departments like surgical department, hospitality department that require more
amount of people to help out the other professionals with their activities (Tasselli, 2015).
Less amount of skilled professionals had resulted in less number of doctors, receptionist and
some more staffs. This results in making the schedule of the professionals very busy.
Question- Are there tasks or functions in your work environment that you believe are
redundant, unnecessary, or repetitive or that could be done by a lesser-paid employee?
Similar situation had been faced by me. I am a nurse and I work in the emergency
department, we have less number of professionals in our department because our shifts are
rotational and most of the professionals’ especially female employees avoid night shifts
(Berghout, van Exel & Leensvaart, 2015). This had resulted in lack of manpower in the
accident and emergency department. usually cases of accidents require immediate attention of
doctors and nurses, due to the lack of doctors as well as nurses, it has been difficult for us to
manage is more than four emergency or accident cases arrive at the same time. The necessity
of professionals arise because this department functions 24 hours a day and every day in a
week.

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References
Berghout, M., van Exel, J., Leensvaart, L., & Cramm, J. M. (2015). Healthcare professionals’
views on patient-centered care in hospitals. BMC health services research, 15(1), 385.
Tasselli, S. (2015). Social networks and inter-professional knowledge transfer: the case of
healthcare professionals. Organization Studies, 36(7), 841-872.