The UK is experiencing a nursing shortage, making it challenging to maintain the staffing levels required to deliver effective patient care. One way of enhancing the care delivered by the existing workforce could be to optimise nurse productivity; however, previous efforts to do this have been largely ineffective, due in part to a focus on the processes of care delivery rather than the nursing activities within these processes. In this article, the author explores the concept of nurse productivity and suggests that enhancing productivity requires the identification of nursing activities and consideration of how these may be undertaken in a more time-efficient manner - or removed altogether. The author discusses two such activities: intentional (hourly) rounding, and fixed-time manual vital signs for patients on general wards. The author also considers the potential of using automatic continuous remote monitoring on general hospital wards to free up nurses' time for other care activities.
Keyphrases
- healthcare
- quality improvement
- mental health
- climate change
- palliative care
- primary care
- end stage renal disease
- ejection fraction
- chronic kidney disease
- newly diagnosed
- pain management
- public health
- deep learning
- prognostic factors
- peritoneal dialysis
- machine learning
- emergency department
- human health
- cross sectional
- patient reported outcomes