Okuzeka
Healthcare Management vocabulary · Staffing and Workforce

Skill mix

Meaning in healthcare management, with examples

nounAdvanced term

In healthcare management, skill mix means: The combination of staff with different roles, grades and levels of experience in a team, such as the ratio of registered nurses to care assistants.

In Turkish: beceri karması, personel nitelik dağılımı

How it is used

Managers review and change the skill mix to balance cost and quality, for example by adding pharmacists or support workers to a ward. A poor skill mix, such as too many newly qualified staff on one shift, can be a safety risk even when the numbers look fine.

Example sentences

  1. The night shift has enough staff, but the skill mix is wrong: only one nurse has intensive care experience.

  2. We changed the skill mix in outpatients so that nurses can focus on clinical tasks.

Common collocations

  • skill mix review
  • change the skill mix
  • appropriate skill mix
  • skill mix ratio
  • staffingThe number and type of staff working in a hospital, ward or shift, and the work of making sure there are enough of them with the right skills.
  • workforce planningPlanning how many staff, with which skills, an organisation will need in the future, and how it will recruit, train and keep them.
  • FTEShort for full-time equivalent: a unit that adds up working hours, so that one full-time worker counts as 1.0 and two half-time workers also make 1.0.
  • agency staffTemporary workers supplied by a staffing agency to fill gaps in a hospital's own workforce, usually at a higher cost per hour.

More terms: Staffing and Workforce

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This page explains English vocabulary for learners. It is not medical advice.