Using Science to Improve the Art of Staffing

In addition to balancing staffing costs with clinical outcomes, nurse executives need to ensure a workplace that supports professional engagement, collaboration, and interdisciplinary relationships, all of which increase staff satisfaction. Research has demonstrated the correlation between poor staffing and nurse burnout, job dissatisfaction, and intent to leave a position. Even though staff engagement and staff satisfaction would be assumed by most leaders to have a direct and positive correlation, nurse executives often presume that “the number of nurses” is the most important element of staffing.

This paper describes the complexity of the staffing system, and suggests how the infusion of contemporary science with the art of current staffing could significantly improve staff allocation and deployment going forward.