Problem:

Chicago Southern is a privately owned 473 patient bed hospital. Close to upscale, gentrified downtown communities as well as high-rise housing projects, Chicago Southern's patients represent a wide socioeconomic mix. Facilities include an emergency room, x-ray and lab facilities, a maternity ward, an intensive care unit, and an outpatient surgery unit. The staff consists of 610 employees, including 343 nurses. Chicago Southern's new administrator, Doug Benton, like many hospital administrators, is under pressure from the nursing staff to off-load some of their nonprofessional (primarily housekeeping) duties. Mr. Benton is pleased to do so as Chicago Southern, like most hospitals, finds that nurses are in short supply. Moreover, the nursing staff represents a large and expensive part of his budget. Any savings here could be substantial. However, Benton believes he should have a work sampling study done to determine the actual mix of nursing duties between professional duties and housekeeping tasks. From his own observations, Benton thinks the work time for nurses contains 15% housekeeping duties. He is confident that the hospital's analyst, Jack Meredith, can distinguish between housekeeping tasks and nursing duties. For this study, he tells Meredith, everything that is not housekeeping will be considered nursing.* He does want Meredith's study to have a 95% confidence level with an error of not more than + 4%.

Required:

Question 1. Assuming you are the analyst: explain what concerns you may have regarding sampling based on the 24/7 nature of a hospital environment and the various departments within a hospital. How would you design your sampling plan to account for this situation?

Question 2. How large must the sample be given Benton's assumptions of the mix of nursing to housekeeping duties? What if Benton revises his estimate and believes housekeeping really takes up 25% of a nurse's time? What is the sample size then?

Question 3. How would Meredith randomize the observations given that different nurses operate differently and that duties change with each shift?

Provide thorough explanation of the given question.