How do I Input Nursing Hours into FTE?

Nursing managers often have changing budget allocations and staffing requirements. Figuring out how many FTE (Full Time Equivalent) nurses you have can be a chore, but luckily it's not a difficult one. You should be able to find everything you need on your payroll report given to you weekly or monthly.

Things You'll Need

• Payroll report
• Calculator

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Instructions

Calculations

• 1

  Look up your total nursing hours for the week or month in which you need to calculate the FTE count. These should be available through a payroll report. If you don't have this, check with your department administrator or payroll office.

• 2

  Figure out how many hours are in the time period in question. A full-time employee works a 40-hour week. So, for a one-week period, 40 hours equals one FTE.

  For a month, it can get a little trickier because months aren't always even. A full workday is eight hours for the purposes of FTE calculations. Multiply eight by the number of Monday to Friday workdays in the month. These can vary from 19 to 23, depending on the layout of the month. For a 22-workday month, an FTE is 176 hours.

• 3

  Divide the number of nursing hours by the number of hours in an FTE. For example, if you have 280 nursing hours in a week, then you perform 280/40 = 7 FTEs. For a month calculation on a 22-day month with 4,000 nursing hours, you would perform 4000/176 = 22.73 FTEs. Your facility may ask you to round to either 22.75 or 22.7, depending on its rules.

• 4

  Disregard the fact that your facility may not use eight-hour days. In nursing it's common to have 12-hour shifts and for a full-time nurse to work only three days a week. For the purposes of FTE calculations, those things don't matter. This is why hospitals often have job descriptions for nursing positions showing .9 FTE.