Background

St. Ouchies Hospital is a general hospital based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was founded by
current chairman Dr. Derek McSteamy in 1989 to commemorate a lifetime wish of his
deceased father. The hospital has now grown into a full-fledged organization employing a
total of 670 men and women. The hospital has a simple mission statement, In matters of
health, quality is our wealth.
Infrastructure
St. Ouchies Hospital follows a traditional hierarchical organizational structure. The
organization is led by Chairman Dr. Derek McSteamy. Below him are the department
administrators who directly over-look the operations at their respective departments. These
department administrators report directly to the chairman. The departments are segregated
into two categories, patient care and non-patient care. Patient care departments include Bone
and Joint Centre, Heart Centre, Mother and Child Centre, Accident and Emergency
Department, etc. Non-patient care departments include Food services, Billing, Security, etc.
Most departments, particularly patient care departments, contain large workforces dedicated
in taking care of patients and maintaining high quality of service.
Issue at hand
Management of workforces is looked over by the head of the HR department, Dr. Meredith
Grey. Recently she has been getting increasing number of complaints from resident doctors
regarding the incompetency of nurses. The complaints are mostly, how the nurses are
reluctant to take orders from the junior doctors and sometimes even the surgeons, how they
cannot carry out simple tasks if no doctor is there to supervise them. One of the resident
doctors, Dr. Christina Yang, has lodged a complaint saying, It is surprising how some of the
nurses who are not at all aware of modern medical procedures got into this hospital.
There have been complaints from the patients also about the nurses behaviour with the
patients and their attendants. There had also been an incident where the ignorance of a nurse
has caused serious post-operative complications of a high-profile patient. Such incidents
harm the good name of the hospital.
It has also very apparent to Dr. Grey that the nurses also have problems with each other.
This has deeply worried Dr. Grey as such complaints would mean the degradation of the high
quality standards promised to the patients. On top of that, any mishandling by nurses may
again prove to be life-threatening for the patients.
Dr. Grey thinks the key to solving this problem is addressing the relatively high nurse
turnover rate that the hospital has been facing over the last few years. With current plan to
enlarge few departments, there is a need to recruit and select 25 new nurses over the next few
months.

Recruitment process
Most nurses at St. Ouchies are recruited internally. 80% of the applications come from
referrals; 4-5% from hospitals website and the rest are spontaneous. Only 10% of the nurses
are recruited externally using advertisement in local newspaper. Since publication of the job
opening a month ago, Dr. Grey received almost 250 resumes. After screening the resumes for
requirements she is still left with 100 applicants.
Usually the interview is conducted by Dr. Grey herself and seldom with the help of the
respective departments administrator. There are no other tests done before or after the
interview and the decision taken through the interview process is considered final.
Now this time, the department administrators as well as the attending surgeons insist on
interviewing the nurses themselves as in most cases the nurses work directly under the
surgeons, not the department administrators. The poor performance of the newer nurses also
made the doctors sceptical of selection process. But Dr. Grey doesnt seem to think this to be
a good idea, as the surgeons are neither as experienced in the selection process nor have the
HRM background to efficiently do the job. Besides, these doctors are very busy persons and
interviewing 100 nurses will definitely take a lot of time and energy. Moreover, it is a known
fact to Dr. Grey that attending surgeons Dr. Torres and Dr. Hunt do not see eye to eye in
many issues and have regular arguments about the roles of nurses. Same goes for many other
surgeons in the hospital. So, including them in the same interview panel seems far from the
best idea to Dr. Grey. So, she is planning to form different panel for different department
consisting doctors from respective departments.
The requirements for the job are: (1) Nursing degree and necessary license from government,
(2) minimum 2 years of experience in the specialized nursing field (3) flexibility and
willingness to learn new skills (4) positive attitude, enthusiasm and helpfulness (5) fit with
the team.
The chairman, Dr. Derek McSteamy wants to ensure the quality of new recruits this time and
so has ordered Dr. Grey to take any means necessary to make the selection process thorough
and efficient. So, Dr. Grey has done her research and wants to incorporate work sample test
with the traditional interview method.
Questions:
Assume you are Dr. Grey and have received direct orders by the chairman to conduct the
selection process.
1. Address the core problem in this case and provide solution for it.
2. Are the selection methods stated above enough to ensure the recruits quality? If no,
what would be your recommendation?
3. How would you manage the issue regarding the formation of interview panel?