Unit managers are men or woman who manage and lead in a nursing unit. Unit managers have many responsibilities of which scheduling, prevention of absenteeism as well as maintaining a cross infection free environment is just a mere few of them. In this assignment I will learn in detail about the above mentioned topics.
PART A
Guidelines used to ensure fair scheduling of nursing staff
Scheduling
Scheduling can be defined as the way in which shifts and divisions of shifts are determined in the unit.
Factors that influence scheduling: o The type of nursing care implemented. Eg more registered professional nurses are needed in community health centres compared to enrolled nurses. o The extent of nursing. Is it a 24 hour service …show more content…
Strategies to prevent absenteeism
Absenteeism can be defined as any period of time that an employee is away from work without making any arrangements.
There are two types of absenteeism:
Unavoidable is when the cause is legitimate for example, a death or a crisis at home. Voluntary is when the cause is illegitimate for example, bad time management or laziness.
In order to prevent this you would need to implement the following: o Get a safety and accident prevention program in order to prevent injuries on duty which would cause absenteeism. o Unit managers should be able to recognise conflict situations and be able to resolve them in order to prevent employees from staying at home due to unhappiness. o Introducing flexi hours and a request book in which staff members can request when they want to be off. o The unit manager can make rough off duties two weeks before she writes it in the off duty schedule in order for people to swop or request to change. o Do not allow employees to be absent without a legitimate reason o Keep an accurate record of attendance in order to verify performance appraisals. o A nurse can be assigned to visit each employee who stays home due to …show more content…
In this case, infections can be transmitted directly via skin to skin contact or indirectly via medical equipment.
Gloves and aprons are needed to prevent transmission of infections. If it is possible, medical equipment should remain the same for the infected patient and not shared with other patients, e.g. blood pressure apparatus. The linen that is removed from the patients’ bed should be treated as infectious and be placed in a separate linen bag. The patients isolated room should be cleaned last of all the rooms in the ward to prevent the spread of the microorganism. Visitors should be informed on the contact precautions and given the necessary protective equipment (gloves and aprons)
The yellow sign should be placed in front of the patients’ door to indicate that precautions should be taken. (See attached)
Clinical conditions that require contact precautions:
Healthcare associated (HAI) pathogens
Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus