You are the nurse manager on a large unit that has 14 FTE RNs on staff, 25 FTE LPNs, and 15 FTE nursing aides, orderlies, and clerks. The schedule for the next 2 months is due in administration by next week, and you are beginning to work on it.

Various requests have been submitted by personnel for vacations, educational conferences, time to attend a wedding, and long weekends, and a request from one nurse asks not to be rotated to weekend evenings or nights because her husband bowls on weekends, and she has no babysitter for their three young children.

Then answer the following questions:

What types of additional information do you need to complete this schedule?

How do you honor requests as submitted? What if two of the requests for vacations came from RNs scheduled to work the same weekends, and they both asked for exactly the same days off?

How do you inform staff whether their requests have been honored? Are they informed by seeing the posted schedule?

Are requests taken in the order in which they are received? Or do you have another means of honoring requests?