The Business of Nurse Management: A Toolkit for Success

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Looking for tips for communicating with your staff? Having problems resolving interpersonal issues in your department? Use this free tool to develop strategies and solve problems with your staff! This delegation tool will help you communicate responsibilities with your staff and improve their performance over time. Looking for help developing a simulation program in your hospital? This checklist will help you make sure you don't miss a thing as you develop a simulation for your staff.

Thinking about starting a Peer Review Committee? Here's a helpful sample charter to define the scope of you committee and set the expectations for your team. Want to know what people really think about your weekly meetings? Try this survey from Essential Skills for Nurse Managers is designed to measure staff engagement and elicit constructive feedback from your staff.

Need help setting the agenda? This tool from our Essential Skills for Nurse Managers book will help you come up with ideas and items to include in your agenda, and strategies to engage your staff on the important issues.

Evaluate whether your workplace is a place where you feel safe or whether there is a climate of bullying and disrespect with the workplace climate questionnaire from the groundbreaking book by Kathleen Bartholomew, RN, MN, Ending Nurse-to-Nurse Hostility, Second Edition: In many states, the incident report can be reviewed by the plaintiff's attorney. Therefore, it is important that you and your staff keep in mind that others may read it.

Use the following checklist of what to do and what not to do to make sure that you correctly fill out an incident report. Try the following exercise to encourage nurses' self-esteem. It's called a "hierarchy of voice" because each step results in greater empowerment. In performance evaluations, share the following list and ask team members to pick 10 meaningful actions that they would like to perform to increase their self-esteem. Then have team members rank their choices from one to 10 easiest to hardest. Educators can use the performance criteria in the competency tool as documentation that they have achieved competencies for yearly performance appraisals.

Administrators can use the criteria when evaluating performance of their staff members. Some organizations required documentation of achievement of selected competencies as part of the performance appraisal process. The expectations vary based on roles and responsibilities; a sample of a competency checklist for equipment-related competency is provided here. Grants are available to health professionals primarily fall into six categories: This table provides more information on each type of grant. Traditionally, RNs and nursing assistants have not always communicated optimally.

This can be resolved by implementing the use of a laminated briefing card with key patient care items that the nurses used to brief the aide they would be working with on their shift. Failure to move towards organizational change happens when smart people resist going from doing the wrong thing well to doing the right new thing poorly. Leaders must ensure that the destination is clear, resources are in place, and valued rewards are provided to break through this barrier. The ARCTIC assessment tool can help identify rewards that would have greater meaning to people and more power to move change and successfully implement shared governance.

You can ease a charge nurse's transition into the new role by assigning a preceptor devoted to assuring that the charge nurse receives the necessary education for that new role. A preceptor should attend your facility's preceptoship program and should posess excellent communication and leadership skills, as well as mentorship and coaching capabilities.

At the end of orientation and precepted time, have your charge nurses evaluate the preceptor and use the feedback to make changes to your program as needed. You might suggest a pilot study in your discussions with the executive team, which will lead you to this tool. This process encourages rapid incremental improvements in cost and quality outcomes. Sometimes we spend so long planning formal changes that we miss the opportunity for, as well as the immediate value from, the change. This process facilitates movement and results in the opportunity to see quick wins or when a change might not be a good fit for your unit or organization and needs to be stopped.

This template is an example of a sheet that could be used to evaluate a nurse residency program NRP session from the new graduate perspective. It covers both presentation and content, can be completed in a minute or two, and can yield specific data that be used to modify future sessions. It also provides feedback to presenters and the materials they use to present with.

A breakeven analysis or return on investment allows you to determine the point at which your facility can expect to recover the cost of an investment. Simply stated, how many procedures will you have to do to begin making a profit? Initially, the cost of doing a new procedure will usually exceed the revenue earned by the facility for the new procedure. At the breakeven point, total revenue equals total costs. After the breakeven point, all procedures done result in profit for your facility as the total revenue received for the procedure exceeds the costs of the procedure.

When it is determined how many procedures are needed to breakeven, a prediction can be made about how long in months or years it will take to being producing profit. After planning and approval of the capital budget, you will need to develop the capital justification when you are ready to purchase the equipment. Justifications should include a summary with supporting documentation attached. A front page summary is important to give the bottom line information. Since charge nurses are actively engaged in activities going on in the unit every day, it makes sense to include them in providing feedback regarding other team members' performance.

Ask them to be honest, professional, and provide feedback in a constructive manner with suggestions for improvement. Once you gather all of the feedback, you as a manager can summarize comments and include this in the performance evaluation.

The business of nurse management : a toolkit for success

You won't be able to improve a prcoess or performance measure unless you define it clearly. For a process improvement effort, you will need an opportunity statement or charter to address certain questions and define clear priorities among all who will work on the process improvement before the team is convened.

There are 20 questions you should ask every vendor when evaluating a CBL or other training product for your organization.

You can make these into a checklist to document the answers during every vendor call and demonstration presentation. The best way to get started is to use the techology yourself so that you can test the pros and cons of it. Using the technology will also give you ideas on how to incorporate it into the educational process. This chart offers a suggested template for determining whether a program is suited to the classroom. Note that the more important it is that learners have immediate, interpersonal communication and feedback to achieve learning outcomes, then the more suitable that program is to a classroom setting.

If you answered yes to the questions in this chart, it indicates that at least some classroom time is important.

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Actual competency in the work setting will be evaluated on the unit by the preceptor. However, there are some behaviors that may be demonstrated during general orientation. The exact behaviors that are assessed vary from organization to organization.

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But all behaviors should be assessed consistently and objectively. The balance sheet is a significant financial statement in every hospital. Familiarize yourself with these key balance sheet terms. Notes are helpful when several top applicants for a position emerge and close comparison becomes necessary. Use this tool to help you find the perfect candidate for the position. Many sources of information provide insight into a nurse's competency level, and you should maintain this information in a performance log for each employee you supervise. All documentation in the performance log should be objective, measurable examples of how each nurse performs his or her job.

Using this tool can help both you and the new graduate nurse plan for current and future skills and educational needs. Using this tool can help both you and the experienced nurse plan for current and future skills and educational needs. Research has shown that if evaluators make direct observations using precise measurement criteria in checklists, with immediate feedback on performance, this is more effective than the traditional evaluation of clinical skills using subjective rating forms.

Here is a template for creating a skills checklist. The mission of TJC is to continuously improve healthcare for the public, in collaboration with other stakeholders, by evaluating healthcare organizations and inspiring them to excel in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value. Here is an overview of educational standards for orientation. A formal structure for managing preceptorships provides a foundation for selecting preceptors, matching them to new employees successfully, and evaluating the effectiveness of orientees' transition to practice.

Develop a policy to deliniate purpose, roles and responsibilities, and issues around the establishment of a nursing preceptorship for new-employee orientation. Hospitalwide and service-specific, unit-based or clinical orientations vary in length, depending on the needs of the organization and of new employees. Compentency-based orientations initiate competency assessment and verification.

Interviewing and hiring can be stressful for nurse managers as they seek to find just the right candidate. The ultimate goal is to hire nurses who practice as professionals, fit into the organizational culture, and assist the organization in achieving its strategic goals. The job description is the first place to start. It's imperative that it defines and portrays the type of person needed to fill the vacant position. Many times new nurses are given authority based on policies and procedures, but are never given the proper interpersonal skills necessary to lead and manage.

To help build future leaders, it is important to guide, direct, motivate, and teach them. Their ability to build relationships is every bit as important as their clinical competence. In addition, some facilities employ the services of a private customer satisfaction survey service. Whether this is Press Ganey, Gallup, or a homegrown satisfaction survey, your "last words" can have a positive effect on how patients or their families complete the survey.

Share this tool with your staff to help them speak to patients using language the patients will be able to recognize when taking the survey. If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are overstressed. Take a look at the quick tips contained in this tool for some fast relief. Principles of time management can help nurses—particularly new graduate nurses—accomplish everything that must be done each day without feeling overwhelmed. The first step to mastering time management is to assess how nurses spend their time.

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One way to do this is to use a time management tracking tool. During the course of several shifts, nurses note how they spend their time. Once they have collected the data, they can look for patterns. Scripting is a tool that gives nurses guidelines for handling situations more effectively.

It can help with daily interactions with patients, peers, and physicians. And used correctly, it can be empowering. Having a few good phrases on hand for situations in which they are the recipient of or witness to horizontal violence can give nurses ammunition to disarm offenders professionally and hold them accountable for their actions. It also helps avoid negativity when addressing a problem with a peer.

This tool lists some scripted phrases for dealing with negatives behaviors and difficult conversations. In addition to the characteristics of the right- and left-brain learners, most experts recognize three main learning styles: By carefully reviewing each of the three categories, you can identify your own learning style and learn to recognize the learning style of others. This tool can be given to adult learners to determine their learning style preferences or used for self assessment.

Managers and educators should recognize the right-brain and left-brain characteristics in their learners and plan programs that stimulate the use of both hemispheres to achieve successful educational outcomes. Use this tool to understand some characteristics of left- and right-brain learners and learn suggestions to facilitate learning.

A simple way to find out what motivates staff—and crucially what will make them stay—is to ask them. As a manager it is important that you keep a finger on the pulse of why they are leaving, but more importantly, why they are staying. Use this survey to get an understanding of how to improve nurse retention at your facility. When two people are involved in a conversation, one is sending information and the other is receiving it. For successful communication to occur, the sender must be a clear speaker and the receiver must be an active listener.

Nurse managers have many opportunities to expect accountability from their staff, both during one-on-one interactions and in group settings. An area where nurse managers should expect accountability, but where they frequently complain they see none, is during staff meetings. Nurse managers can promote accountability during meetings by having an agenda that is available beforehand to set the stage for what is expected and alert staff to how they need to "be" in the meeting. Refer to this tool when preparing your agenda. An abstract is designed to give the reader a quick understanding of the research, but may not include the main results or contain all the conclusions from the study.

The investigator should tell subjects how important they are to the success of the study, but never coerce subjects to participate. As a nurse manager, you should take advantage of local resources and brag about your nurses every chance you get. Use this figure to get some bragging going on in your local community newspapers.

Orientation to a unit or department is not just the responsibility of the manager. In order for the new hire to be successful, staff must be included in this process as well. You can use this sample letter as a guide. All staff should be involved in the process of determining appropriate elements for the annual review.

The content should vary each year and comprise selected skills, duties, tasks, and behaviors that reflect results of performance improvement activities, infection control reviews, risk management reviews, additions of new technology, and needs identified by medical staff or other employees. After staff participate in this process at your facility, send them a letter such as this one thanking them for their feedback, suggestions, and comments that will lead to improved patient care and processes.

The preceptor is the primary staff member who will assist the new hire through the orientation process. When you match the right preceptor with the new employee, you have beginnings of a wonderful peer-to-peer working relationship that will set the tone for the rest of the peer group. Have hopeful preceptors fill out this application form before bringing them on board. The most important factor in the future sucess of a new employee is an effective orientation process.

Be sure your orientation program meets the individual needs of your new hires by having them fill out this evaluation form. As a nurse manager, you set the tone for the work culture of your unit. If you raise or lower the bar, staff will meet it. Therefore, managers must walk the talk of the standards conveyed to staff and their actions must be grounded in the responsibility to ensure quality care and professional behavior for patients, coworkers, and the organization as a whole.

The ultimate goal of interviewing and selecting staff is to find the right fit between the talents, skills, and abilities needed in a given role and the talents, skills, and abilities of a given applicant. Use this sample tool ensure that you set out for and meet every goal for projects, training, and reviews. Get interviews off to a good start before even meeting the job candidates. Adapt this sample preinterview letter to your liking and send it to the potential staff member one or two weeks before the scheduled date.

The most effective exit interviews are those that yield information nurse managers can use to improve work environments for their current and future nurses. Refer to this list to make sure you are asking departing staff members the right questions. Staff members thrive in environments where they are praised for their hard work.

Make sure your staff knows you appreciate every positive example they set at your facility using this sample recognition memo. The following are questions to ask the risk management department as a new nurse manager. Use a memo like the following sample to notify your supervisor of a competency issue on your unit. When writing your memo, be specific by identifying the competency issue and your correction plan. Use this assessment tool to identify group norms that affect staff happiness, productivity, and effectiveness.

This is an example of a short, concise business plan for the medical-surgical unit. Depending on the proposal or project, some of the steps may be consolidated, and others may be expanded. Use this sample as a guide. Create and implement a clear, realistic timeline by referring to this sample.

If you are responsible for developing a capital budget, you may have to fill out a capital budget acquisition form. Such forms are used when requesting funding for new equipment and to make the case for purchasing new, large price-tag items and equipment. Keep these six questions in mind when budgeting for orientation, education, and training. Gather the feedback and use it to improve future relationships and the overall process at your facility.

Formally welcome your new staff member to the team and take care of some important agenda items with this letter. A budget is a budget. Never say "the budget is wrong. Then, develop an action plan to address the issue. Here are a few examples of proactive things to say when defending your budget. In many hospitals, the finance department and administration work together to develop a budget calendar. This calendar is distributed to all managers and helps keep everyone on the same page with their budgeting tasks for the upcoming year.

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