orm_october-2023 - 10

Technology
Multiple factors are used to make
the most appropriate assignments, including
competencies in a specific team
or specialty area, experience with equipment,
training status of orientees, and
case complexity that may require additional
resources. Awareness of these
often depends on tribal knowledge or
manual, error prone record-keeping.
While charge nurses do typically know
their staff and for what they are most
suited, this is yet another item for them
to track and becomes much more challenging
with a larger number of staff,
new staff, or new charge nurses-increasing
time to perform assignments
and resulting in less-than-ideal placements.
Nurse
managers thus must spend
much of their day adjusting assignments,
following up on breaks or relief
assignments, and communicating with
staff through multiple methods that still
include paper and whiteboards to show
transparency across perioperative and
surgeoun staff. Managing staffing becomes
almost a full-time job for charge
nurses and nurse managers, which reduces
their availability to help the surgical
department run smoothly and proactively
resolve potential issues.
Working within these constraints
can lead to job dissatisfaction due to
staff being uncomfortable with performing
surgical procedures outside of their
experience levels, not seeing opportunities
to advance their own skills, or
having to overtly rely on experienced
staff. This, in turn, hampers their development
and leads to overtime or mandated
shifts to fill schedule holes.
As staffing leaders alongside educators
look to provide orientees with a
well-rounded orientation, staffing schedules
and assignments have an added
layer for which to account. Without the
ability to evaluate training opportunities
proactively, educators do not have visibility
into cases that could help staff
achieve their goals. The result is siloed
orientation and training processes that
10
OR Manager | October 2023
take longer to produce cross-trained
staff confident in supporting more procedures.
The
role of technology
Technology can effectively replace routine,
stressful tasks, leaving nurses to
do more impactful work.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging
as a transformative technology in the
healthcare space and shows tremendous
potential for revolutionizing OR
staffing. By applying AI-powered algorithms,
predictive analytics, and automation,
hospitals can optimize staff
allocation, enhance data-driven decision
making, and achieve new levels of OR
efficiency.
Tools that display future staffing
needs driven by predicted volumes can
empower nurse managers and charge
nurses to proactively evaluate schedule
gaps by staff type that goes beyond
default ratios. Machine learning continuously
evaluates surgical case participants,
cross-referencing future cases
to inform recommendation of staffing
needs. This directly helps staffing coordinators
and nurse managers determine
how future assignments will need to be
adjusted through shift swaps by time
or day of week, as well as on-call staff
availability.
When looking to make case and
room assignments,
intelligent solutions
synthesize relevant information in
combination with recommendations to
better optimize the available staff and
capitalize on opportunities to build a
broader talent pool. Recommendations
offer staff competencies by procedure
and working experience with surgeons.
With this data readily available at the
point of assignment, nursing managers
can make informed decisions when
assigning team members to complex
cases, cases requiring specialized
equipment, or when assigning relief.
Additionally, cross-training goals or
orientee training gaps that are highlighted
early aid in the execution of professional
development to expand skill
sets, such as identifying shadowing experience
needed to satisfy speciality
area rotations. AI can support a future
state where surgical teams are precisely
and intelligently composed with
the needs of the staff and the needs of
the OR in a fair balance.
In contrast to the long timeline to implement
career development programs
or strategic partnerships, technology
provides a potential near-term solution
to the staffing shortage by directly improving
the daily operations that impact
job satisfaction. Technology is also a
relatively low-cost investment, of which
return on investment-staff optimization
and experience-is immediate.
As healthcare organizations continue
to ideate and take action to address
staffing shortages, leadership should
invest in the teams upon which they
are heavily dependent as part of their
recruitment and retention strategy.
Providing staffing leaders with diverse
resources, including technology, can
help to sustainably curb the staffing
shortage and strike a better balance between
supply and demand. ORM
-Kimberly Hamilton,
MPH, director,
OR Product
Operations at
LeanTaaS, works across customer and
product development teams to expand
the perioperative services portfolio and
deliver additional intrinsic value to clients.
Stacey Leadbeater, senior product
manager at LeanTaas, has over 15 years
of experience in healthcare IT product
development, spanning areas such as
perioperative, clinical workflow
applications, patient engagement
tools, and revenue cycle.
Reference
Rosseter R. Nursing Shortage Fact
Sheet. American Association of Colleges
of Nursing. October 2022.
www.ormanager.com
https://www.aacnnursing.org/news-data/fact-sheets/nursing-shortage#:~:text=The%20RN%20workforce%20is%20expected,nurses%20needed%20in%20the%20U.S http://www.ormanager.com
orm_october-2023

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