NURS 101: Time Management, Cross-Training, and Scheduling Report

This report delves into critical aspects of nursing service administration, addressing time management challenges and offering practical solutions. It identifies four common time wasters—unnecessary interruptions, unimportant tasks, procrastination, and constant email checking—and proposes effective strategies to mitigate their impact. The report then explores the pros and cons of cross-training as a recruitment strategy, highlighting its benefits in maintaining operational continuity and providing professional development opportunities, while also acknowledging the time and financial investments required. Finally, the report recommends digitization for scheduling, emphasizing the advantages of electronic health records in improving resource utilization and patient care. The report concludes by advocating for digitization as the optimal scheduling strategy for a head nurse in a healthcare setting.

NURSING SERVICE ADMINISTRATION 1
Nursing Service Administration
Author
Institution

NURSING SERVICE ADMINISTRATION 2
Nursing Service Administration
Does a time-waster prevent a person from accomplishing the job or achieving the goal,
identify 4-time wasters and the best solution for each one?
Time management is essential for greater production and efficiency in every
organization. It is the process of planning and organizing how to split time between certain
activities. Good time management enables an individual to work smarter and complete tasks
within a short period and reduce stress. It builds a good reputation for the workers. Additionally,
it increases opportunities for advancement and achieves important life and career goals.
Failure to manage time has undesirable consequences. It leads to damaging effectiveness
and increases stress in the employees. It can also make a person miss the deadline resulting in a
stalled career and poor professional reputation. Therefore, it is essential to have skills in time
management. The following are various ways of time-wasting and their best possible solution.
Unnecessary interruptions
Unanticipated interruptions disrupt a person's train of thought and can take up to 10 to 15
minutes to regain back the concentration. These interruptions are usually unessential, for
instance, a person knocking the door at someone's office can wait until later or the following day.
To ensure that you are not interrupted you need to create a block of time with no visitors or calls.
It is also good to time limits for meetings and scheduling meetings at a better time. Looking for a
place where you can work uninterrupted is the best solution.
Unimportant task

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Many people spend a significant period focusing on the wrong task. In an organization or
at individual capacity most people work very hard only to realize they have been concentrating
on the wrong work (Bruce, 2016). The best way to avoid this is by concentrating on the highest
priority the leader is asking you to concentrate on. They comprise those that are directly related
to accomplishing your individual or team's goals and the ones likely to have greats benefit for the
organization.
Procrastination
The roots of procrastination are underlying irrational fears. Many people believe that
putting things off results in better results in the future. However, according to John (2015), it is a
perfection in disguise. The best way to avoid procrastination is to act as you go. It is also
important to realize that unresolved problems do not resolve themselves.
Checking emails constantly
Emails are one of the main time wasters. An average employee in an organization spends
most of their time checking emails at least 36 times an hour. It is therefore advisable to limit
your time of checking emails. For example, in a day you can set aside twice or thrice to respond
to them.
Cross-training has been used as a recruitment strategy. What are the pros and cons of
using this strategy?
Cross-training is the act of equipping the employee with different skills to perform
different works in the organization work (Anna, 2016). It aims at enabling us to understand how
and what it takes for the organizations to run. The main reason behind cross-training is to

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provide support within the company instead of overloading or outsourcing one group of
employees during busy times. Cross-training has advantages and disadvantages.
Cross-training helps maintain complete coverage in a company. It ensures there is
continuity of operations if an employee goes on leave, suddenly quits or is unexpectedly absent.
This limits the interruptions of services or production where the unexpected gaps can be costly,
delaying productivity and profitability. Cross-training provides a major opportunity for
employees to expand their current skills and grow professionally (John, 2019). Similarly, the
ability to try other types of job enables them to gain valuable diversified work experience.
Employees who have been cross-trained are likely to have a higher level of independence
in their newly acquired skills or knowledge. They are allowed to expand their leadership skills
and they can participate in sharing new and old knowledge with others. It can be observed as a
motivational tool to encourage workers by working together.
Besides having various advantages, cross-training also has disadvantages. Establishing
and conducting cross-training takes time, dedication and a lot of effort (Mistry, 2018). Cross-
training takes several training sessions for each person and to ensure multiple members of the
organization are trained properly, it takes a substantial amount of investment.
Conducting training involves time and money. It is an investment to every organization
hence it incurs cost if an internal or external person is required to train. People will also be
forced to negate from their regular jobs to learn new ones and this might temporarily cost
productivity. Finally, it is very hard to change and some people might show some signs of
resistance to learning new tasks. Fear can play a significant role or it might because employees
are resentful of having an extra responsibility without added pay.

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You are ahead nurse of X unit, one of your responsibilities is scheduling, what scheduling
strategy do you think best fit your workplace? Explain your answer.
Digitization
Healthcare providers are required to acquire and use electronic health records. The HER
aims at pulling the healthcare industry to improve the provision of care. The use of computers to
automate every aspect of care provision provides a major opportunity for scheduling. As a head
nurse, I would, therefore, recommend digitization in scheduling.
The main aim of scheduling is to advance the match between healthcare resources and the
patient's needs. Digitization reduces the waiting time for the patient and improves the utilization
of vital resources. It is quite expensive to lease nurses, and thus if you can get more visits per
nurse while maintaining the quality of care, the healthcare organization is sustainable (Hall,
2012).

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REFERENCES
Anna, V. (2016). Creative cross-training – good or bad? Retrieved from:
https://www.thehrdigest.com/creative-cross-training-good-bad/
Bruce R (2016) The Top 5 time-wasters (and how to eliminate them). Retrieved from:
https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/growth-strategies/2016/12/the-top-5-
time-wasters-and-how-to-eliminate-them.html
Hall, R.W. (2012).“Handbook of Healthcare System Scheduling,” Springer, New York.
John C (2015). The Best Way to Manage time wasters. Retrieved from:
https://www.inc.com/john-rampton/best-way-to-manage-time-wasters.html
JOHN R. (2019). Cross-Training Employees Strengthens Engagement and Performance.
Retrieved from: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/cross-training-employees-
2275317
Mistry, P (2018). What Are the Benefits of Cross-Training Employees? Retrieved from:
https://www.thehrdigest.com/what-are-the-benefits-of-cross-training-employees/