Productivity.
Productivity is such an ugly word.
Productivity is defined, by Merriam Webster, as the quality or state of being productive, or the rate per unit area or the unit volume at which consumables is made by producers.
To the OR bosses it means the units of hours worked per case volume.
If the case volume isn’t there, there should be less people working.
I understand this. If there are 6 cases in a 8 room OR department then the staffing needs would be minimal.
Unless they are all starting at the same time, such as first case starts.
But then what do the staff do in the rest of their 8/10/12 hours?
Do you send them home?
And hope they have PTO to cover the shortfall.
This is what the department does.
Often, there are people wanting to go home.
So day shift lets them.
But what if the people you are sending home are scheduled to work into the evening shift?
Do you strip the evening shift of the option of running more than 1 room at a time?
And what if the evening suddenly gets busier, as been known to happen, a lot?
And the evening shift could have used the extra room to great advantage.
Or does the day shift doom the evening shift into working WAY past their go home time?
Sometimes.
Would it not be more useful to cut people at the beginning of the shift?
To move their start time by a couple of hours, and have them come in at 1030.
I have posited this and the response is “What if there is an add on in the morning?”
My answer is “What if there is an add on after you’ve let my other 2 evening nurses and techs go home?”
Exactly.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 