Managing nursing services in a hospital is the most challenging task to any Hospital Administrator. Attrition among nurses are alarmingly high owing to disproportionate workload, workplace stress, expanding scope of nursing services to include documentation, inventory, Quality Compliances etc. Hospitals are working under tight financial considerations because of reducing Average Revenue per patient and one of the common cost containment strategy followed is reducing the manpower. A study was conducted at an ICU of a large tertiary care hospital to determine optimum staffing level using WISN method. It was an observational study conducted between January 2015 and May 2015 at a multidisciplinary ICU and Calculation was made as per WISN method.

Results: ICU had an average occupancy level of 71 through the year and based on WISN method, 41 nursing staff posted at ICU was found to be optimum including the need to manage emergency. If the occupancy increases beyond 85%, there is a need to post 4 additional staff to manage the workload.

 

Key Words: WISN, Nursing Workload, Staff Optimisation, Nursing Efficiency