Aldenbrook County Hospital Case Study

Aldenbrook County Hospital, a teaching hospital, has hired a new Vice President (VP) of Nursing. The 625-bed hospital is located in the inner city. The hospital’s Patient Transportation Department must report to the new VP of Nursing, who is unaware of the problems in the Department. The Patient Transportation Department has a full-time equivalent (FTE) of twenty-three and a half (23.5) positions. They have seventeen and a half (17.5) full time and part-time transporters, a supervisor, two dispatchers, a mechanic and two front door attendants. Many of the employees have never worked in a hospital. The transporters are assigned to all other departments, except the Critical Care and the Emergency Room departments. The transporters are not performing well. They are experiencing strained …show more content…
The Transportation department is not staffed properly; it is under staffed. The scheduled-position method is used to measure staffing (Baker and Baker, 2014). The hospital is open 24 hours a day and seven days a week so coverage is needed everyday for three shifts. Therefore, a schedule of 8 hours per day, 7 days per week equals to 56 hours of work for one full time employee (Baker & Baker, 2014). That is equivalent to 1.4 FTEs (Baker & Baker, 2014). Aldenbrook County Hospital has twenty-three and a half (23.5) FTE positions. There are seventeen and a half (17.5) transporters (full and part-time). The remaining of the staff include one-supervisor, two dispatchers, one mechanic and two front door attendants. Only five transporters work Monday through Friday at the Radiology department, which leaves twelve and a half employees to service the other departments in the hospital. All the FTE positions are not filled. There are not enough transporters to cover the other departments adequately. Insufficient staffing or staff shortage leads to many other problems, such as medical errors or harmful