Model a floor plan + process flow
Map how a patient moves through the ER step by step (the process flow) and use it to plan a floor plan and the staff each step needs.
- Putting steps in the right order: A process flow is a chain of steps; if you cannot order events correctly, the flow will not match what really happens to a patient.
- Reasoning about time per task and totals: Staffing a step means comparing how long one task takes to how many people arrive, so you need basic time-and-rate reasoning.
Prerequisites are inferred: pending teacher review.
Re-learn the skill with worked practice and clear examples.
Model the patient path as ordered boxes, then staff each step by comparing how long the task takes to how many patients arrive.
Triage takes 4 minutes per patient. In the first hour, 30 walk-in patients arrive. How many triage nurses are needed to triage all of them within that hour?
Reviewed- A.1 nurse
- B.2 nurses
- C.4 nurses
- D.8 nurses
Show the worked solution ▾
Answer: B. 2 nurses
- Step 1: Find the total work: 30 patients times 4 minutes each = 120 nurse-minutes of triage work in the hour.
- Step 2: Find what one nurse supplies: In one hour a nurse can work 60 minutes, so one nurse handles 60 of those minutes.
- Step 3: Divide: 120 minutes of work divided by 60 minutes per nurse = 2 nurses.
Why it's right: The work is 30 times 4 = 120 nurse-minutes, and each nurse supplies 60 minutes per hour, so 120 divided by 60 = 2 nurses are needed.
- A: One nurse supplies only 60 minutes, but 120 minutes of work are needed, so one nurse is not enough.
- C: 4 nurses would supply 240 minutes, far more than the 120 minutes of work needed.
- D: 8 comes from multiplying instead of dividing; it greatly overstaffs the step.
Aligned to Process modeling: staffing a step · reading level ~grade 9
- An ER manager uses a process-flow map plus simple per-step math to decide how many nurses to schedule at triage during the busy evening hours.
Fill these in as you work through the lesson.
- Process flow (the ordered path a patient takes through the ER):
- Floor plan (a map of the rooms and where each step happens):
- Triage (the sorting step that ranks patients by how urgent they are):
- Bottleneck (the step where patients pile up and wait):
To staff a step: total nurse-minutes = number of patients (multiply/divide) by minutes per patient; then divide by 60, the number of minutes one nurse can (work) in an hour.
- List the first three steps a walk-in ER patient goes through, in order.
- Point to one step in a flow where patients are most likely to pile up, and say why.
- Explain how a process-flow map helps a designer decide where to put rooms on the floor plan.
Sketch a 4-box process flow for a walk-in patient (arrive, triage, treatment, discharge). Then, if triage takes 4 minutes per patient and 30 patients arrive in one hour, work out how many triage nurses are needed to clear them within that hour.