Nurse requirement planning: a computer-based model

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Nursing Workforce Planning
• Health Informatics

Background:

• The debate on mandated patient-nurse ratios in hospitals necessitates robust requirement estimation methods.
• Implementing fixed patient-nurse ratios requires a comprehensive approach to accurately determine staffing needs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To discuss an alternative approach for estimating nurse requirements.
• To present a method for nurse requirement planning under prescribed patient-nurse ratios.

Main Methods:

• Development of a computer-assisted nurse requirement-planning model.
• Systematizing and accelerating the nurse requirement estimation process.
• Unit-wise and overall nurse requirement estimation.

Main Results:

• The computer-based model facilitates objective and prompt responses to staffing requests.
• Enables efficient handling of perceived nurse shortages by nursing administrators.
• Supports data-driven decisions for nurse allocation.

Conclusions:

• The computer-based approach offers advantages over traditional methods.
• Facilitates pre-evaluation of alternative staffing scenarios through simulation.
• Aids in optimizing hospital resource allocation and nurse deployment.