Capstone Project: Executive Summary
The research project’s topic is “Solution to Clinical Staff Shortage in Healthcare Industry – A Case Study of Mayo Clinic”. Importance of studying the topic arises from acuteness of the understaffing problem across healthcare industry and devastating effects it leads to. Staff shortages impact organizations, patients and clinicians causing falling treatment capacity, falling quality of healthcare services, and increase in workload and stress among clinicians. The purpose of this research is to find short-term and long-term solutions to achieve sufficient staffing level in Mayo Clinic and thus ensure high quality of patient care, sufficient treatment capability, and well-being and job satisfaction of its employees.
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization operating in three major directions: clinical practice, education of clinicians, and healthcare research. The clinic provides a wide range of medical services including innovative diagnosing and treatment of cancer, transplantation and neurosurgery to more than 1 million patients yearly. The organization is widely recognized for high quality of medical services it provides, for instance, U.S. News & World Report 2016-2017 Rankings determined Mayo Clinic as the best hospital overall in the U.S.
Mayo Clinic workforce is constituted from nearly 64,000 employees. They include 57,100 administrative and allied health staff, 4,500 physicians-scientists, and 2,400 residents, fellows and other professionals. Clinical staff shortages are evident in the organization, despite its extensive efforts in facilitating competitive workplace conditions. Thus, in 2016, Mayo Clinic was included in the 100 Best Companies to Work For list published by Fortune Magazine for 13th consecutive year and recognized for providing competitive compensation package and support of professional development, diversity, and work-life balance of its employees. Nevertheless, the organization faces significant staff shortages, since, for instance, it had to fill more than 16,000 positions during the 2015 year, and currently the organization is in search for 1,300 allied health staff employees and 173 physicians (Mayo Clinic, 2017). It may be explained by voluntary employee turnover, growth in staffing needs due to growth and development of the clinic, involuntary employee turnover, and employee ageing.
The problem was addressed through analysis of secondary information sources and conducting primary research. Analysis of literature on the topic allowed identifying major reasons of staff shortages in healthcare settings. Work overload, constant pressure to improve performance, and necessity to perform multiple tasks at the same time lead to increase in employee turnover rate and make staff shortage problem even more acute. For instance, Bae and Champion (2015) found that 24% of registered nurses worked more than 40 hours a week, and 41.8% of physicians reported to work 60 hours or more per week compared to only 6.4% of the general population. Shanafelt and colleagues (2012) found that 45.8% of U.S. physicians experienced at least one symptom of professional burnout with prevalence of emotional exhaustion and 44.5% of physicians were dissatisfied or strongly dissatisfied with their work-life balance.
Primary research has qualitative design, since the research question focuses on learning the specific meanings participants hold about the problem …
