Health care challenges Essay

Our country is set to face a new way of managing health which could potentially change the environment on how nurses deliver care. As our nation prepares for the implementation of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, nursing as a healing profession has to be open to what the future of health management holds. The goal is to have all registered nurses reach a high level of understanding and acquire tools necessary to provide the best possible way at a low cost. It is both moral and professional obligation of our leaders to ensure that highly competent and well trained nurses are available throughout this transition. To achieve this goal, nurse educators are the key players to train both novice and seasoned nurses to the change based on the new policies and evidence-based research. However, our Nurse Educators are overwhelmed with their current workload hence causing faculty shortage in the country. A recent study published on 2011 aimed to explore the relation of nursing faculty shortage to their workload, determine if there are evidences that the faculty workload is not equitable and the implication/effect to the nursing research and nursing academic. According to this study, there are multiple factors that influence the nursing faculty shortage such as lack of interest from the nurses to try academic careers, time spends to clinical practice defers pursuance into academic positions, low salaries, high educational costs, nursing education dissatisfaction and most importantly low institutional funding for additional nurse educator positions. Nancy Falk stated in her article that â€Å"despite current critical shortage and growing demand for nurses and nurse educators, federal funding falls far short of addressing these healthcare workforce challenges. Workforce projections suggest that the US will face a shortage of 285,000 nurses by 2015 and 500, 000 by 2025.† (Mason, Leavitt & Chaffee, 2012, p 58). Also, American Association Colleges of Nursing reported on 2011-2012, that nursing schools turned away 75,587 applicants who are qualified for baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs because of inadequate nursing faculty including clinical preceptors. These challenges ultimately impact the future of patient care if not addressed. Faculty leaders must work in partnership to create a strategy that will help prevent further faculty shortage by focusing on balanced faculty workload to avoid burnout. This article emphasized on the continuous support by government officials especially adequate funding to nursing education. AACN is allocating its resources to protect federal funding for academic development programs, identify strategies to prevent nursing educator shortage. Additional solution is to create a mentorship program for nurse faculty. This strategy was confirmed by various literature and studies to promote nursing faculty recruitment and retention. Mentorship brings encouragement and direction to clinical educators who are new to the role and prevent burnout. Health care system will be lost without nurses in our society. Statistic shows that there are currently 2.9 million nurses in the United States but nurses with special skills such as in education is extremely needed. Nurse Educators, in some ways, affect the lives of everyone. It is through this role where highly competent, compassionate healers such as nurses are produced. â€Å"The future of the nursing profession depends on a steady supply of nurses to provide the quality care to patients† (Cowen & Moorhead, 2011, p. 60)

Capacity planning Essay

WHAT IS CAPACITY PLANNING? Capacity can be defined as the ability to hold, receive, store, or accommodate; a measure of an organization’s ability to provide customers with the demanded services or goods in the amount requested and in a timely manner. Capacity planning is the process of determining the production capacity needed by an organization to meet changing demand for its products. The objectives of capacity planning are: To identify and solve capacity problem in a timely manner to meet consumer needs. To maintain a balance between required capacity and available capacity. The goal of capacity planning is to minimize this discrepancy. Capacity is calculated: (number of machines or workers) Ãâ€" (number of shifts) Ãâ€" (utilization) Ãâ€" (efficiency). THE NEED FOR CAPACITY PLANNING: Capacity planning is the first step when an organization decided to produce more or a new product. Once capacity is evaluated and a need for a new expanded facility is determined, facility location and process technology activities occur. Too much capacity would require exploring ways to reduce capacity, such as temporarily closing, selling, or consolidating facilities. Consolidation might involve relocation, a combining of technologies, or a rearrangement of equipment and processes. Capacity planning is done in order to estimate whether the demand is higher than capacity or lower than  capacity. That is compare demand versus capacity. It helps an organization to identify and plan the actions necessary to meet customer’s present and future demand. HOW IS CAPACITY MEASURED? For some organization capacity is simple to measure. General Motors Corporation can use â€Å"numbers of automobiles per year.† But what about organization whose product lines are more diverse? For these firms, it is hard to find a common unit of output. As a substitute, capacity can be expressed in terms of input. A legal office may express capacity in terms of the number of attorneys employed per year. A custom job shop or an auto repair shop may express capacity in terms of available labour hours and/or machine hours per week, month, or year. Capacity can be expressed in terms of input & output, depending on the nature of business. Organization Measure Output Automobile manufacturer Numbers of autos Steel producer Tones of steel Power company Megawatts of electricity Input Airline Numbers of seat Hospital Number of beds Tax office Number of accountants CAPACITY PLANNING DECISION: Capacity planning normally involves the following activities: Assessing existing capacity. Forecasting capacity needs. Identifying alternative ways to modify capacity. Evaluating financial, economical, and technological capacity alternatives. Selecting a capacity alternative most suited to achieving strategic mission. THREE STEPS OF CAPACITY PLANNING: Determine Service Level Requirements: The first step on the capacity planning process is to categorize the work done by systems and to quantify users’ expectation for how the work gets down. Define workloads Determine the unit of work Identify service levels for each workload Analyze current capacity: Next, the current capacity of the system must be analyzed to determine how it is meeting the needs of the users. Measure service levels and compare to objectives Measure overall resources usages. Measure resource usages by workload Identify components of response time Planning for future: Finally, using forecasts of future business activity, future system requirements are determined. Implementing the required changes in system configuring will ensure that sufficient capacity will be available to maintain service level, even as circumstanced change in the future. Determine future processing requirements Plan future system configuration STRATIGES FOR MODIFYING CAPACITY: After existing and future capacity requirements are assessed, alternative ways of modifying capacity must be identified. Capacity refers to a system’s potential for producing goods or delivering services over a specified time interval. Capacity planning involves long-term and short term considerations. Long-term considerations relate to the overall level of capacity; short-term considerations relate to variations in capacity  requirements due to seasonal, random, and irregular fluctuations in demand. Excess capacity arises when actual production is less than what is achievable or optimal for a firm. This often means that the demand in the market for the product is below what the firm could potentially supply to the market. Excess capacity is inefficient and will cause manufacturers to incur extra costs or lose market share. Short-term Responses- For short-term periods of up to one year, fundamental capacity id fixed. Major facilities are seldom opened or closed on a regular monthly or yearly basis. Many short-term adjustments for increasing or decreasing capacity are possible, however. Which adjustment to make depended on whether the conversion process is primarily labour-or capital-intensive and whether the product is one that can be stored in inventory. Long-term Responses- Expansion from World War II through the 1960s, the U.S. economy was one of abundance and growth. Since the 1970s the United States has encountered problems of scarce resources and a more competitive economy. Organization today cannot be locked into thinking only about expanding the resource base; they must also consider optimal approaches to contracting it. Example:- A warehousing operation foresees the need for an additional 100,000 square feet of space by the end of the next five year. One option is to add an additional 50,000 square feet now and another 50,000 square feet two year from now. Another option is to add the entire 100,000 square feet now. Estimated costs for building the entire addition now are $50/square foot. If expanded incrementally, the initial 50,000 square feet will cost $60/square foot. The 50,000 square feet to be added later are estimated at $80/square foot. Which alternative is better? At a minimum, the lower construction costs plus excess capacity costs of total construction now must be compared with higher costs of deferred construction. The operation manager must consider the costs, benefits, and risks of each option. WHAT ARE THE MODELS AND TECHNIQUES THAT ARE USEFUL FOR CAPACITY PLANNING? Present value analysis: It is used to evaluate the time of capital investment and fund flows. Aggregate planning models: it is useful for examining the way of using the examining the way of using the existing capacity in the short terms. Break even analysis: to determine the minimum break even volumes of production. Linear programming: this is helpful in determining the optimum product mix for maximizing contribution, considering the capacity constraints. Computers simulation: it is helpful to determine the effects of various scheduling policies. Decision tree analysis: this can be applied for long term capacity problems. WHAT ARE ECONOMIES OF SCALE? It is well known principle of economics. It indicates the relationship between cost and capacity in an operating system. When output increases in an operating system, the system is likely to experience cost advantages on account several factors. Due the following reasons the average unit cost begins to fall with the rise in output level : Spreading the fixed costs of capacity over a larger output Improved utilization of several resources in the system Cost benefit in procurement on account of increased volume. Efficient use of supervisory and management staff. The economies of scale cease to occur beyond a level of production or output. This is called ‘Diseconomies of scale’. There can be several reasons for this: Inefficient management due to largeness of operation and resultant lack of coordination. Overuse of machineries and break down of material handling equipments Over hiring of employees, or excessive overtime. Service slowdowns due to increasing complexities Increase in quality problems because of mismanagement and lack of focus. EFFECIENY AND UTILIZATION: Utilisation = Actual Output Design capacity Both measures expressed in percentage Example:- Design capacity= 50 trucks/day Effective capacity= 40 trucks/day Actual output= 36 units/day

Systems Approach Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Systems Approach - Essay Example [Kelly, G., p.204]. According to this, the laws governing the parts determine or cause the behavior of the whole. That’s why the client’s behavior needs to be viewed as a whole, being determined by the complex of influences from inner and outer surroundings to the organism. General Systems Theory is based on the assumption that there are universal principles of organization, which hold all the systems, be they physical, chemical, biological, mental or social. In this case, while treating a client there is an urgent need to appreciate his behavior as being influenced by a complicated list of determinates, which could be very different, but at the same time, due to the Systems Approach, are similar to all the human organisms. According to G.A.Kelly, the person-as-clent is ‘what he does’, and the therapist is primary interested in the client’s overall personal construction system within which he structures his world, and builds his relations to such a world. Primary diagnostic work in this case include an outline of the client’s existing channels of movement, the prediction of the development of a way how a person will behave, and what factors this behavior is determined by. The reasons for this emerge from the client’s inner problems, hidden in his childhood (this is the case of study for psychoanalysis, when the behavioral patterns of a client are the shadows of the events happened to him in the past), or are determined by the conditions of the present surrounding, and his personal behavioral constructs. Kelly stresses, that ‘by seeing a client’s constructs and their opposites as channels of potential movement for him, the therapist has some basis for forecasting what adjustments will appear to the client to be available when he finds himself up to his ears in people’. [Kelly, G., p.187] To view a client and to make an appropriate diagnosis the therapist must point of all the influences which have a certain impact on the

Advances in accounting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Advances in accounting - Essay Example This research seeks to determine the relevance of OBA in an environment with high competition and the lack of cooperation between the suppliers and consumers. Most companies after exploiting most of the cost reduction methods have resorted to forming supply chains to be competitive in the market. With this, OBA was found to be necessary for reducing cost and thus raised productivity. For OBA to be successful, it requires cooperation and mutual trust between the suppliers and consumers. The researchers have noted that most companies are not willing to share important information with the buyers. This paper is important since it seeks to address the importance and challenges facing the application of OBA technique in inter-organizational cost management. Despite the challenging circumstances under which OBA is applied, the paper addresses how it can be used for the good of the parties involved and also give recommendations on how to counter the challenges involved. The paper is interesting since it involves interacting with people in the real market situation, and the findings thereof are a true reflection of what is happening in the field. The key reference literatures for this research are vi. Sharing Sensitive Information in Supply Relationships: The Flaws in One-way Open-book Negotiation and the Need for Transparency, European Management Journal by Lamming, Richard, Nigel D. Caldwell, Wendy E. Phillips, and Deborah A. Harrison (2005) The above books describe the relevance of OBA to cost reduction and the conditions for the success of the tool to cost management in IOCM. These books seek to describe the challenges facing the implementation of OBA in inter-organization cost management. The research method chosen for the study is interview. This involved interviewing purchasing experts in the first and second phases and afterward interviewed sales experts. These interviews were done using questionnaires, whereby the questionnaires were sent to