Anesthesia groups that staff a substantial percentage of their operating rooms with CRNAs need a method to cover late hours during weekdays. One method is to assign CRNAs to 8, 10 and 12-hour shifts. The number of CRNAs assigned to the 10 and 12-hour shifts depends on the percentage of operating rooms that are run beyond 8 hours. Typically, late coverage is stated in the anesthesia group’s contract with the hospital.
Once the anesthesia group determines the percentage of operating rooms that need to be covered late, a spreadsheet can be used to determine the number of CRNAs that should be employed to provide adequate coverage. The goal of the use of shift workers is to maximize coverage while minimizing overtime pay. Shifts give CRNAs more clarity on their quitting time. Some CRNAs prefer to work less than 5 days per week and are willing to work longer shifts in order to do so.
The shift percentages and the amount of leave time granted to CRNAs are used to calculate the number of CRNAs to be employed as a factor of the number of operating rooms covered.
The accompanying spreadsheet calculates the “CRNA factor”. In this spreadsheet example, the percentage of 8 hour CRNAs is 45%, 10-hours CRNAs 30% and 12-hr CRNAs 25%. Given that CRNAs in this example take 7 weeks of leave per year, this configuration results in a CRNA factor of 1.41. This means that for however many ORs the group covers, the number of CRNAs that need to be employed is 1.41 times the number of ORs. In this example of 30 operating rooms to be covered daily, 42.3 CRNA need to be employed.
Using the same logic, the spreadsheet also calculates the number of CRNAs needed if the number of ORs to be covered varies by day of week.
If you download the spreadsheet, you can change the numbers highlighted in yellow and calculate values based on your circumstances.
http://www.joeladen.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/CRNA-Shift-Coverage-Calculator.xlsx