¶ … Resource and Management Project Resource and Management

Operating Budget

An operating budget is a strategy or basic blueprint of the manner in which the everyday activities within the nursing facilities will be monitored and undertaken together with the personnel, resources and also the supplies over a certain period of time. It is basically the approximation of revenues as well as expenses over a period of time (Foley, 2005; Clark, 2005). The following illustration will show the operating budget of the project for the nursing facility in the first five years of the operation.

Expenses

Salaries

1,700,000

Advertising and Recruitment

Orientation and Training

Equipment

1,200,000

1,150,000

900,000

900,000

900,000

Nursing Supplies

990,000

900,000

900,000

780,000

780,000

Total

4,560,000

4,194,000

3,992,000

3,852,000

3,852,000

It is imperative to note that the budget does not include the revenue from the project. This is for the reason that prior to the inception and operation of the program it is difficult to measure the amount the facility will gain in improved health care. It is deemed that the nurse manager may not be required to calculate and evaluate revenue from the program within the budget (Untalasco- Gealan, 2013). The trend in the operating budget can be clearly perceived. For instance, the expenses incurred by the nursing facilities through advertising and recruitment will be mostly and largely felt in the first two years of the orientation program. The same case applies in the equipment that is invested on. In the first three years once the hires undertake the licensure examinations, less and less equipment is necessitated (Friedman et al., 2013). More so, according to Danna (2008), every unit of nursing is deemed to be a cost center and therefore has an operating budget. However, the nursing services that are encompassed in the general charges for room as well as board and the nursing expenses are not deemed to be revenue producing.

Resources

The particular orientation program is intended and set out to bridge the gap that exists between the fresh nurse graduate lacking experience and the experienced ones while at the same time offering the newly graduated registered nurses with support mechanisms, tools for education and professional teaching and mentoring. This orientation program also offers the basic transition for the new hires registered nursing from a theoretical aspect into a practical aspect. In the initial five years of this program, there will be a great need for the space and equipment (Friedman et al., 2013). There will be need for physical space to place and position the equipment that will be employed in the orientation program. There will also be need for physical space to place nursing supplies which will be used. There will be equipment that will be used for the simulation of the desired clinical setting. The orientation program will come up with different scenarios that reveal an identical clinical and nursing setting for the training of the new hires. This would necessitate space perhaps within buildings to accommodate these settings. On the other hand, examples of equipment used within the orientation program will include intravenous pumps, dressing supplies, nursing or hospital beds and even stethoscopes. These are some of the portable equipment that can be used and shared by different centers. Therefore the nursing facility can use physical space in a teaching facility for this kind of equipment. On the other hand, there will also be need to use equipment that are not portable such as the MRI scan.

Marketing Strategies

The orientation program will be marketed in a number of ways. The sales and marketing manager of the nursing facility will be responsible for phasing out the marketing strategies for conveying the orientation program being offered by the establishment. To begin with, the projected will be marketed using billboards and posters in and around the state. This will be an attempt to get traction from the probable new hires. Another marketing strategy will be the use of medical journals and periodicals that are largely and mostly read by nurses and doctors and players in the nursing sector. This will not only be seen by new hires but also through word of mouth passed out through nursing professionals.

Another marketing strategy will be the use of social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter. With the advancements in technology and with more and more people as well as facilities embracing information technology, social media has become one of the most important and substantial platforms in marketing any products or services being offered. Social media will be a marketing strategy that will largely enable the nursing facility to reach several and a diverse number of new hires from different...

This strategy will also include posting up the details of the orientation program on the website of the nursing facility.
Funding

The funding sources for the orientation program or project will encompass grants, contracts as well as other sources of funding. One example of the grants handed out is the source amounts handed out by the Human Resources and Services Administration. These are grant amounts handed out by the organization which are used to support the five-year program to make the most of the prospect to educate the faculties of nurses in the future. In addition, the nursing positions can be funded from a range of sources including income from Medicare, the government, local programs and initiatives from Medicare as well as co-payments made by the patients (Australian Medicare Local Alliance, 2013).

Project Risks and Challenges

In as much as the project would be of great benefit to the nursing facility, it does pose a number of risks and challenges as well. To begin with, there is the risk of loss of the newly trained nurses and therefore a major loss to the facility as a whole in terms of capital spent and intellectual resources lost. According to Li and Jones (2013), health care facilities are forced to spend capital to replace the nurses who opt to leave and to start the whole process of advertising, recruiting and training new hire nursing employees. However, the orientation program would not guarantee that the new hires would not leave the nursing facility and therefore the facility faces the risk of losing intellectual capital of nurses who will chose to leave and suffer potential losses in terms of productivity. Another challenge is that the nursing facility might face problems in the orientation undertaken for new hire. This is because differences might come about between the orientation that the nursing facility would prefer to implement and the standardized one that is perhaps implemented by the state administration.

Another challenge in the program is having poor or no return in the investment undertaken by the nursing facility. The main objective of the whole project is to attain new hires and train them to avoid any nursing turnover rates. This is to save up on costs incurred by the facility and at the same time be able to improve the rates of the provision of health care being given by the nurses within the facility. However, there is risk that the nurses placed in the orientation program might end up failing the licensure program and therefore can end up being a loss for the institution. This specific challenge faced by the nursing facility in its recruitment and return is the probable lack of return on investment in its four to five-year improvement plan.

Project Timeline

Year

Week 1-2

Week 3-4

Week 4-10

Week 11-32

Week 32-52

2016

System Orientation

Hospital Orientation

Training within the classroom on basic care on patients as well as equipment

Educator meetings and teachings on the different cares

Teaching and Training on patients with acute care, clinical and medical ethics, business ethics and legal expectations

Nursing Orientation

Unit Orientation by use of self-learning modules

The project timelines offers a detailed projection of the activities that will be undertaken during the whole period of the orientation program. The timeline period for the project shown above is for the first year 2016 which indicates which orientation programs will last for the 52 weeks. The first two weeks, the project encompasses the new hire nurses being given what entails the system orientation and the nursing orientation. In the third and fourth week, the new hires will experience hospital orientation and also orientation amongst the different units that the nurses will be in. In the next six weeks, there will be basic training and health care not only on patients but equipment as well. Between week 11 and week 32, the project will consist of educator meetings and lectures and the teachings on the different kinds of cares. Lastly, the remaining weeks there will be teachings and trainings on how to hand patients in acute conditions, clinical and medical ethics, business expectations and legal expectations and what the nursing facility anticipates from the new hires.