Journal of

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Background: Approximately, more than 60 percent of the hospital costs allocate to hospital human resources. The study aimed at determining the number of nurses in the poisoning department of a general hospital in Shiraz.

Methods: This study was an applicable one based on hospital information.  Study population was patients who referred to a hospital poisoning department of Shiraz in 2012.  The medical records were checked up. Monthly stratified data was obtained from the statistics office and patient records (physician's orders and nursing notes) using a monthly systematic data collection randomly. Linear programming techniques using lingo version 8 software were performed to data analysis in order to calculating appropriate number of nurses.

Results: Two nurses in morning, two in evening, three in night and seven in all shifts were at least required nurses in the poisoning department of the general hospital. The number of available nurses was more than estimated number in the department.

Conclusion: The numbers of nurses were over the approximated number in the department in morning and evening shifts.  Besides, the estimated of nurses from quantitative methods such as linear programming were lower than those calculated experimentally by nursing managers. It is recommended to Hospital administrators considering these techniques calculation to achieve appropriate distribution of staff in departments.

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Background: Reduction of errors is necessary to improve the quality of healthcare, promoting communication between the hospital staff and patients, and decreasing the patient's complaints in hospitals. Due to the high probability of error in the operating room (OR), this study aimed to detect the potential errors in the OR of Nemazee hospital using FMEA.
Materials and Methods: This study was a qualitative one which assessed Failure Mode and effects of OR in six steps using FMEA technique. At First, the OR activities were listed, then the failure modes were recognized. Next, the Risk Priority Number (RPN) of each error was calculated according to the indicators of Occurrence (O), Severity (S) and Detectability (D).
 Results: Totally,204 failure modes in 36 activities in five process in surgery ward were recognized.15.7 percent of failure modes classified as high risk factors (RPN ≥ 100). The most and the least distribution of origin factors were related to human and organization and technical errors, respectively.
Conclusion: The majority of errors in OR was set in of human skills category. Besides, the most and the least failure modes were belonged to “patient anesthesia by circular activity number 20, RPN=1795.23)” and “not to oxygenation for patients (the activity number 36, RPN=99.33) respectively. Identification of 36 activities and 204 errors in the 5 processes of Operating Room represents the comprehensiveness of HFMEA method in the identification, classification, evaluation and analysis of the health system errors.