Improve efficiency: Cross-train employees
Improve efficiency: Cross-train employees
Illinois ASC follows these 4 guidelines
Every outpatient facility experiences some staffing inefficiencies, such as hours or days when some full-time employees are not needed.
These down times could be dealt with in various ways. One common scenario would be to anticipate having down times and to keep affected areas staffed with part-time or contract employees who could be told to punch off the clock when business is slow.
However this method might result in greater staff turnover since part-time workers may come and go more often than full-time employees. And greater staff turnover means the facility spends more time and resources training new employees, which is an inefficient use of revenues.
An alternative scenario would be to cross-train employees to handle several areas in the facility. A cross-trained operating room nurse, for example, could easily move into a crowded recovery room to help out there when the operating room is empty.
Cross-training staff is an effective way of using staff time more efficiently, says Vicki B. Sullivan, RN, CNOR, director of surgical services for Quad City Ambulatory Surgery Center in Moline, IL. Sullivan gave a workshop on staffing ASCs at this year's annual meeting of the Alexandria, VA-based American Association of Ambulatory Surgery Centers. Quad City is a freestanding, physician-owned surgery center that averages 150 procedures a month. It specializes in orthopedic surgery and performs some cosmetic podiatry pain management.
The two big advantages to cross-training employees are:
· Everyone is able to help others.
· Employees understand everyone's responsibilities and functions, and so they get along better internally because they realize what it takes to get a particular job done. "It makes a more cooperative, effective team," Sullivan maintains.
Sullivan has identified four key guidelines to successfully cross-training staff. These factors are:
1. Motivate staff for the change.
Outpatient facility managers might find it difficult to build employee enthusiasm about a change that involves learning new skills and that may increase their workload. The key is to explain to the staff that the change will benefit them because it will help the entire facility stay profitable, which in turn will prevent staff cuts, Sullivan says.
"If we can keep our costs down then they have more job security," she adds.
Another way to motivate employees is to emphasize that they should no longer think of themselves as simply an operating room nurse or a recovery room nurse, for example. Managers no longer will think of employees in those limited roles, and the facility will provide them with all of the training they need to learn new skills and new roles, Sullivan says.
"We want to make them feel comfortable," she says. So managers will need to reassure employees that no one expects them to grasp their new roles immediately and that they'll be given time to learn and adjust.
"It takes time to provide an efficient and effective service," Sullivan adds.
2. Identify quality mentors.
The facility will need some leaders for this change to work, Sullivan says. Employees will more readily accept a big change if they can see that some of their peers are ready to help them meet the challenge.
Sometimes these leaders will be obvious; other times the managers will need to assess various employees' skill levels and educational levels, as well as look for employees with cooperative attitudes.
3. Develop a format for mentoring.
The mentors will do most of the training, using a format that has the cross-training employees spending a couple of weeks at a time on one new task, Sullivan says.
For example, the nurse may begin learning scrubbing responsibilities until that work is done easily, Sullivan says.
Start with the easy tasks
The format may work best if it's arranged logically, from the easiest task to the most difficult, Sullivan suggests.
"If they're comfortable and want to learn a different area, then we proceed," Sullivan says. "If they feel they need more time, then we allow them more time."
As the cross-training process continues, outpatient managers might begin to see a pattern that could aid them in their future hiring practices, she says. For example, Sullivan has found that it is easier to train operating room nurses to work in pre- and postoperative recovery areas than it is to train a pre- or post-op recovery nurse to work in the operating room. Knowing this, Sullivan says she might tend to hire more operating room nurses because they will be easier to cross-train.
4. Encourage and reward staff.
Once a facility has invested in cross-training good employees, it pays to make them happy and keep them.
Sullivan suggests outpatient facilities pay competitive salaries and emphasize the pleasant working conditions of having to work no weekends, no on-call hours, and no holidays.
Also, Sullivan notes that it's important to offer inexpensive rewards, such as frequent thank-you notes or comments, occasional lunches and dinners for special milestones, and sharing with staff the positive feedback from patient satisfaction surveys.
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