Introduction
Understaffing is one of the critical problems affecting the modern healthcare sector. It results in the deterioration of the quality of care, patients’ dissatisfaction growth, and poor outcomes (Griffiths et al., 2019). For this reason, finding and hiring new skilled and experienced employees acquire strategic importance as the fundamental aspect of the health unit’s stable work. The process also demands a detailed planned including activities necessary for integrating new staff members into the existing team and training them to ensure their readiness to contribute to results’ improvement. A pediatric unit also requires a specific preparedness level and is sensitive to gaps in knowledge or the inability to perform some functions (Buckley et al., 2020). For this reason, it is vital to create a strategic recruitment plan encompassing all necessary aspects.
Timeline
Resolving staffing issues, it is vital to consider the available amount of time, resources, and goals. Establishing the timeline should also mind the current training, education, and development needs as they might demand additional effort and employees’ attention. For this reason, the recruitment activity should rest on a timeline used as a guideline for finding and integrating new health workers into the current unit (Buckley et al., 2020). The six-month period is viewed as the most appropriate time frame for preparing newly-hired specialists and their adaptation for peculiarities of a pediatric unit. Following the selected timeline, it is also possible to consider the existing short and long-term staffing goals and improve outcomes.
Focus Areas
Working with personnel and hiring activities include the consideration of the existing units’ peculiarities to ensure the gaps are filled and teams work efficiently. For a pediatric unit, it is vital to realize the unique nature of work as it presupposes cooperating with parents and delivering care to children and infants, which might be different from previous experiences and functions. For this reason, training, development, and education needs become the central focus areas as they ensure new specialists will be able to function in the new environment. These include teaching how to work with children, their unusual needs, and peculiarities of care delivery regarding age (Buckley et al., 2020).
RNs and LPNs should acquire an improved vision of their duties and ways to perform them. Moreover, they should be ready to learn new approaches to providing care to children and cooperating with their parents. As for unit secretaries and housekeeping staff members, the focus areas include the improved vision of the pediatric unit’s current needs and how they should be fulfilled. For this reason, the proposed plan offers a six-month period including training and development activities vital for successful recruiting.
It is also vital to focus on internal and external elements as they affect outcomes and the quality of care. The offered plan presupposes devoting equal attention to two factors as they are fundamental for achieving the desired goal (Butler et al., 2019). Internally, it is vital to fill the existing gaps and align the stable work of the unit regarding the current requirements (Campbell et al., 2020). All new specialists should perform their functions outline by the internal analysis.
At the same time, the proposed strategy also devotes attention to external needs and the necessity to improve the functioning of the unit in terms of the current environment (Worringer et al., 2020). It presupposes working with parents, aligning the work of the department, paperwork, and ensuring the stable work of all systems (Van der Mark et al., 2021). Under these conditions, the offered plan and strategy focus on most essential areas, both internal and external ones, and suggest a detailed guideline on preparing new specialists.
Conclusion
Altogether, staffing acquires the top priority nowadays as the central demand to the stable and effective work of the healthcare sector. For a pediatric unit, hiring new specialists becomes a major task as it guarantees the ability to promote better outcomes among children. The proposed six-month plan focuses on training and development and education areas to prepare newly-hired employees and ensure both internal and external factors are taking into account. It is expected that the implementation of the proposed plan will help to resolve the problem with understaffing and create the basis for future improvement.
At the same time, it will guarantee the effective use of available resources and costs as following the time-frame, it is possible to avoid overspending and ineffective distribution of time. Short and long-term goals will also be achieved.
References
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Butler, M., Schultz, T. J., Halligan, P., Sheridan, A., Kinsman, L., Rotter, T., Beaumier, J., Kelly, R. G., & Drennan, J. (2019). Hospital nurse-staffing models and patient- and staff-related outcomes. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 4(4), CD007019. Web.
Campbell, K. A., Van Borek, N., Marcellus, L., Landy, C. K., Jack, S. M., & British Columbia Healthy Connections Project Process Evaluation Research Team (2020). “The hardest job you will ever love”: Nurse recruitment, retention, and turnover in the Nurse-Family Partnership program in British Columbia, Canada. PloS one, 15(9), e0237028. Web.
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Van der Mark, C., Vermeulen, H., Hendriks, P., & Oostveen, C. (2021). Measuring perceived adequacy of staffing to incorporate nurses’ judgement into hospital capacity management: a scoping review. BMJ open, 11(4), e045245. Web.
Worringer, B., Genrich, M., MĂĽller, A., GĂĽndel, H., Contributors of the Seegen Consortium, & Angerer, P. (2020). Hospital medical and nursing managers’ perspective on the mental stressors of employees. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(14), 5041. Web.