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Sterile processing department (SPD) managers are frequently tasked with determining appropriate staffing levels. There are many reasons for reassessing staffing levels. The healthcare facility might be looking at:
* Ways to cut costs
* Tasks that should be performed in SPD
* The number and types of employees that might be needed in a new or renovated facility
* How increasing volume for a particular area or procedure will affect staffing in the SPD
Whatever the reasons, making this determination can be a daunting task. It might be tempting to take just take a quick look at other healthcare facilities in the geographic area for comparison. Although this approach might provide a ballpark idea of what SPD staffing should be, it probably is not very accurate. In healthcare, SPDs are very different from each other.
Another approach could be to use some general work-volume estimates to determine staffing. A rule of thumb used by many consultants is that three to four trays per hour can be processed through the SPD, meaning that one full-time equivalent (FTE) can process 24 to 32 trays in an eight-hour day. To determine the number of FTEs needed, one only needs to divide the total number of trays processed each day by 24 or32. The actual number of trays that can be processed depends on many factors, including the procedures used to clean, assemble, and sterilize the trays; the cleaning equipment used; and the complexity of the trays being processed. Again, this might yield an interesting general result, but It might not be very precise and reliable.
A more accurate approach would be to hire a management or productivity engineer to come in and perform studies on how much time it takes to perform all of the tasks performed by SPD technicians. This assessment would be very accurate, but would probably cost a significant amount of money. There are also software programs that assist SPD managers in calculating the number of FTEs required and the productivity of individual employees. Typically, the costs of purchasing and implementing such a software management program are high.
What all of the above options lack is the ability to thoroughly compare facilities and staffing. The AAMI Sterile Processing Benchmarks (SPB) tool allows such comparisons. This...