Nursing Leadership Reflections

The person interviewed is the owner and operator at Animal Health Center, LLC. His name is Shawn Sanders. His wife is my friend. Do you use a software program for your budget. If so, what program? No we don’t use a software program for a  budget . We use Quickbooks to keep track, but nothing for   budget . If there isn’t adequate funding, what are the first 3 things you cut out of your budget? We haven’t had to cut, but if we did it would be n ew equipment or capital improvements, a dvertising, and c haritable donations How would you handle a project that was running over budget? As of yet, that hasn’t been applicable. How do you handle unexpected expenses? We keep a reserve or savings for unexpected expenses. When a budget decision has to be made, who gets together to make the decision? Usually the main owner, sometimes the spouse. If you are under budget on a project, what happens with the money? Savings, improvements What is your biggest budget e...

This week we learned about career development/nursing development and about staffing a unit. I learned that I'm not exactly sure where I would like to end up in my career. I've been interested in several areas of nursing, such as the NICU, case management, nurse administrator, home health, and where I'm currently at. I'm currently working in the medical surgical, ortho, and pediatric units. I ultimately would love writing medical themed children's books and have my husband help me illustrate them; I fear that will be more of a hobby though as I don't think I can make enough money selling books. One thing that my instructor said in his lecture is that we need to be thinking far into our future because when we're older we probably won't want to be floor nurses anymore as our physical health deteriorates. As we age we are at greater risk for back injuries for example. Becoming a nurse administrator, charge nurse, house superviso...

This week we talked about the future of nursing. There were a lot of good ideas mentioned of where the future of nursing should be headed. One of the main ideas I thought was most important was continuing education. I don't necessarily agree that education needs to be formal education, but that nurses extending their education is essential to carry out all that is required of us and to do our jobs well. Having formal education is a quantitative way to measure education and I think adding a BSN or MSN to a badge gives patients more of a sense of comfort feeling that a BSN or MSN nurse may be more competent and better able to care for them. In reality, nurses have a lot of literature, nursing conferences, CEU, on the job training, etc. that can help them increase their education and skills. I believe more nurses would get their BSN or masters if a raise came with their new level of education, however, most of the hospitals in my area don't give raises. Timpanogos hospital at le...

Surprisingly I enjoyed learning about budgets this week. I naturally enjoy finding ways to save money and avoid debt. Looking over the budget, I was surprised that the majority of money paid out was to nurses and with some adjusting of nurse and CNA hours, over $20k could be saved. The following table is what I used to show temporary staffing hour changes. My intent was not to lay anyone off, but to notify the employees that we had a slow month and may have to cut back hours temporarily until we get our feet back on the ground. I would ask any there are any nurses and CNAs that would volunteer for a decrease in hours.  And then I would rotate who gets called off so there'd be a balance of who's hours get cut back. This would also give nurses a chance to look for a new job if they want to, without losing their current job. Many of the nurses in this case study were seasoned nurses making high wages. If some of these seasoned nurses quit, then new nurses could be hired when busin...