A nurse manager is entrusted with ensuring that patients receive quality care and health outcomes in a given facility. They execute the roles of guiding other nursing staff in their assigned departments to ensure that they adopt a culture and new ideas or practices for the healthcare practice betterment. They oversee patient care and management practices, set working schedules, coordinate staff meetings, and make budgetary and personnel decisions. As a nurse manager, it is important to ensure that other staff members are included during the budgetary process using various strategies. The inclusion provides a diversity of ideas and a sense of involvement that promotes collaboration when working together. It also motivates the rest of the staff as they feel part of the process towards achieving a common goal.
Some of the strategies that can be employed to ensure that the team is involved in the budget development process include the creation of a budget development committee from the unit members. The committee should comprise nurse representatives from different roles to review, analyze, propose and recommend budgetary adjustments while considering various perspectives (Gab Allah et al., 2020). The next role will be to ensure that the selected team members undergo rigorous budget training, whereby they will be trained on the basics of budgeting processes, the various terminologies used, and the concepts to be applied. This role can be achieved by organizing various workshops and seminars conducted by financial and budgetary experts. This information is key in ensuring that they make informed decisions during the process. Because one of the nurse manager’s roles is coordinating meetings, they should ensure that the team selected hold regular meetings to ensure clarifications, exchange of ideas and reviewing the set targets and goals.
To ensure that the team is consistent about the budget throughout the year, the nurse manager should establish a transparent means of communication whereby the members are free to share their ideas and concerns about the proposed budget. This environment can also be created by organizing budget workshops and using the budget committee to air the members’ views or the roles they represent. Various meetings can also be organized to inform the unit members about financial performance and updates. These meetings should be interactive to allow for the exchange of ideas on adopting cost-effective measures or generating more revenue via innovations that do not affect the patient care process (Naranjee et al., 2019).
Encourage the unit members to participate and contribute to the budget ideas while motivating them on how their contributions add up to their unit’s financial success or progress. The nurse should also be very intentional in recognizing and celebrating key contributions to the financial progress or success of the unit via recognition of significant contributions made by any of the unit members. The nurse manager should also encourage or adopt an accountability culture to ensure that each member takes the burden and responsibility of the budgetary process as their own. A culture of constant feedback should also be solicited to assess the areas of improvement and adopt the necessary changes.
References
Nurse Manager: Job Description, Skills and Salary | Duquesne University. (2017, May 2). Duquesne University School of Nursing. https://onlinenursing.duq.edu/blog/nurse-manager-job-description-skills-and-salary/
Gab Allah, A. R., Elshrief, H. A., & Ageiz, M. H. (2020). Developing Strategy: A Guide For Nurse Managers to Manage Nursing Staff’s Work-related Problems. Asian Nursing Research, 14(3), 178–187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anr.2020.07.004
Naranjee, N., Ngxongo, T. S. P., & Sibiya, M. N. (2019). Financial management roles of nurse managers in selected public hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa. African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.4102/phcfm.v11i1.1981
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