Shouldice Hospital Limited

Staffing needs affect the nursing department’s budget, staff productivity, the quality of care provided to patients and even the retention of nurses (Jooste, 2013). The nurse manager has to explain to the management of the benefits of change in providing adequate staffing all the time. Adequate staffing helps staff retention. Staff retention saves a lot of money in terms of orienting new people to the unit. Safe staffing always helps in the reduction of falls, infection rates, pressure ulcers, decrease hospital stays and death. Flexible and creative scheduling is essential for retaining staff and promoting a positive work climate (Grohar-Murray & Langan, 2011). Adequate staffing with good staffing ratio will help nurses to concentrate on their patient care which may help in a reduction in medical errors and lawsuits to the hospital.

3. How many operations could the hospital perform per day before running out of bed capacity? How well would the new resources be utilized relative to the current operations? Why?

“A healing hospital is a place characterized by thousands of small and wonderful things and a few big ones. At the center is love. More than anything else, supports a strong culture of caring. It expresses the deep passion of both patients and caregivers” (Chapman, 2003). Healing hospitals focus on patient-centered care.

Since 1945, Canada based Shouldice Hospital has gained a reputation around the world for their primary performed surgeries and services in hernia repair. Shouldice’s main objective is to take the inconvenience of being diagnosed with a hernia and turn it into a quick and even enjoyable experience for their patients. This is all possible through Shouldice’s service delivery system, consisting of selecting patients that do not hold an overly complicated hernia in order to perform a superior surgical technique established by Dr. Shouldice. The patients endure an active stay to ensure a proper, speedy recovery, and a quaint estate resembling a country club accompanied with a pleasant staff and encouraged socializing with other patients that give them a unique experience. After the patient's stay, Shouldice Hospital invites them back for a yearly gala Hernia Reunion dinner to follow up and provide a complimentary hernia inspection. The lifelong bond that Shouldice has been able to establish and maintain display the above and beyond service they’ve given their clientele for decades.

Rio Grande Medical Center is a full service not-for-profit acute care hospital with 325 beds. Most of the hospital’s facilities are devoted to inpatient care and emergency services, but a 100,000-square-foot section of the hospital is devoted to outpatient (OP) services. Of the 100,000-square-foot OP section, the OP Clinic uses 80%/80,000-square-feet, and the remaining 20%/20,000-square-feet are used by the Dialysis Center. Increased patient volume at the OP Clinic has created a need for 25% more space than it is currently assigned. Due to its large size and patients’ need to access other departments the decision has been made to move the Dialysis Center to another location, and allow the OP Clinic to

Another way to alleviate the overcrowded schedule is by making patient appointments for every other time slot. If a patient calls in for an

Shouldice Hospital is one where only external abdominal hernias are operated. The hospital has a unique “technique” for this which was developed by Dr.Earle Shouldice, the founder of the hospital. The hospital with its low cost solution, properly routine tasks, facilities for the patients and their visitors, high quality service, and best in industry doctors and staff had a competitive edge. The Shouldice Hospital in itself is not just a curing centre but a holistic experience for its patients, doctors, nurses and supporting staff alike.

Shouldice Hospital focus on hernia repair surgery which is mostly performed on males. Shouldice operation strategy

The hospital is currently utilizing 71.43% of their beds, this is actually an ideal operating point. To increase its rate of utilization might decrease the service quality.

Unique and pioneering surgical technique for Hernia operation which reduced the suffering of the patients and led to rapid

Thus by increasing the number of beds, this would help give the hospital a more wiggle room to schedule more operations per day and help run at its capacity. Taking time perishability of the service goods (hospital beds) into account I think the number of beds need to be increased to 110 instead of 116. Hence the percentage increase in beds required would be (110-89)/89 = 23.60%. Thus, the current demand can be met and Shouldice can be operated at its fullest capacity by increasing the number of beds by 23.6%.

For every one extra patient added to a nurse’s work-load, the mortality rate following a simple surgery increases by 7% (Aiken, Sloane, Cimiotti, Clarke, Flynn, Seago, Spetz & Smith, 2002).

Referring to the results from the calculations in appendix, and the given information that Hospital is operating nearly 137 people per week, we can conclude that maximum capacity of the hospital beds per week is 111.25(refer to Appendix 2). So, the bottle neck resource of Shouldice is the capacity room which contains only 89 beds. Also, if the doctors work on Saturday’s , the patients who arrive on Fridays can be operated on Saturdays which will force the patients to leave on Tuesday morning instead of Thursday morning and give space for patients who arrive on Tuesday.

Middletown Hospital is a 200-bed, not-for-profit-general hospital that has an emergency department with 20 emergency beds. The emergency department handles on an average 100 patients per day. The hospital’s CEO has authorized the Six Sigma Team (SST) to address complaints received from patients seeking treatment between 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. The complaints are centered on waiting times and poor service. During this time the data indicates that approximately 70% of the department’s admissions occur (University of Phoenix, 2009, Course Syllabus).

Shouldice hospital is a specialized hospital in the repair of external abdominal hernias in Canada. The hospital was established by Dr. Shouldice the founder of a new and superior surgical technique, now known as the Shouldice method, for repairing hernias which yields better medical results as well as a significantly shorter recovery time.