a. Applicable General Topic: - Nursing Management
b. Title of article: - Self-scheduling For Hospital Nurses: An Attempt And Its Difficulties
c. Authors name: - Lotte Bailyn PhD, Robin Collins BSN and Yang Song BSc
d. Name of the Journal: - Nursing Management
e. Date of journal: - January 2007
f. Volume: - 15
g. Number: - 1
h. Pages (72-77)
i. Publisher of journal: - BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
Synopsis and Summary The article that I read was about the study that had been conducted for one of the department in the hospital which cares about nurses self-scheduling. A unit that consists of 70 registered nurses (RNs) who care of (31) beds. Some of the nurses were met by the researchers' group who sat the study agenda. The researchers felt that the nurses were eager to involve and try this new self scheduling. The scheduling system was described which was in place before the study started and the modifications that were introduced.
The sign up sheet was prepared by the nurse manager, which lists all the data need for the sign up sheet (names, days on duty, months, vacation's days and days for education). The study held from 4 January 2004 to 1 January 2005 and the following data were collected:-
• Four times the nurses were asked to fill in a short questionnaire.
• The nurse manager kept monthly track of the number of sick calls and the number of change requests.
• The nurse manager kept track of the amount of time she spent on scheduling each month, and her annoyance with it.
Findings for this study as follow:-
• The number of change requests were decreased dramatically after the first month of the self scheduling but then reverted in the last two months of the year due to the scheduling of Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• Number of sick calls remained steady at approximately 45.
• The time the nurse manager spent to make the monthly nursing schedules decreased, except on holidays.
• Nearly