Numerous studies have shown the impact that hospital staffing has on the quality and safety of patient care, as well as staff burnout and job dissatisfaction. RML Specialty Hospital’s staffing is driven by individual patient need.
We believe that multidisciplinary care teams offer patients the best professional collaboration for specialized treatment and customized care. Each care team at RML features a registered nurse (RN), a patient care technician (PCT), and a respiratory care practitioner (RCP).
Based on years of experience and with active staff input, RML developed target care ratios for each discipline represented on the care team. The ratios are determined by the usual care needs of the RML patient over time. These target ratios are reviewed and adjusted as necessary. A care ratio means the number of patients, on average, that one nurse (or PCT or RCP) cares for each shift.
Many individual patient factors are built into our staffing analysis, including such components as:
- number and type of patient medications
- patient mobility, weight and assistive devices needed
- patient ability to participate in care and ability to communicate
- special treatments and equipment, such as ventilators and dialysis
At RML, we know that individual patient needs vary significantly at different points in time. To respond to these variations we evaluate each staff assignment at every shift to offer patients coverage based on their acuity that day.
In fiscal year 2007, both our RN and RCP patient-to-staff ratios were lower than (meaning better than) the target ratio, while our PCT ratio was only slightly above the desired level, attesting to RML’s commitment to quality of care for our patients – and quality of work-life for our staff.
