Personnel requirements of a poison information center

Time use by poison information specialists at a poison information center was assessed to determine personnel requirements. To justify the current staff complement, to develop a formula for calculating future needs, and to monitor staff use, a time-use study was conducted by professional management engineers over 8 days in a 24-day period. Equal time was spent during each of three work shifts (0700-1500, 1500-2300, 2300-0700). Of 11 poison information specialists, 9 worked during the study period. Activity was divided into direct (handling poison information calls) and indirect (follow-up calls, quality assurance, continuing education, etc.) categories. Time study calculations for direct activity were based on 324 actual exposure calls. The average time to receive and document an initial poison exposure call was 8.7 minutes (range, 6.6-11.1 minutes). Indirect activity related to those calls averaged 12.9 minutes (range, 5.8-20.7 minutes), for a total of 21.6 minutes per call (87.3% of an eight-hour work shift). Nonproductive activity accounted for 12.7% of the time. Based on a mean (+/- S.D.) daily exposure volume of 104.7 +/- 1.35 calls, it was determined that 5.4 full-time equivalents per day were necessary to respond to an average day's call volume. At this center, the workload management study provided a sound basis for assessing current staffing needs and for justifying future changes in staffing based on actual call volume.