Care Logistics Survey: Hospital Nurses Frustrated by Chaos That Diminishes Time With Patients
Alpharetta, GA (PRWEB) April 21, 2014 -- U.S. hospital nurses are frustrated that understaffing and chaos in care coordination robs them of time they should spend with patients, according to a survey released by Care Logistics, Jackson Healthcare and Jackson Nurse Professionals.
The nurses surveyed identified several things interfering with patient bedside time, including:
• Poor communication among nurses, doctors, hospital leaders, units and service areas
• Arranging, tracking and following up on patient diagnostic procedures
• Limited coverage and clinical support force nurses to divide time among more patients
• Fatigue from excessive overtime
“These aren’t isolated challenges that affect only nurses,” said Samantha Platzke, CEO of Ohio-based hospital consulting firm Remarkable Results. “These problems reflect chaos and inefficiency in care delivery across the entire organization.”
Platzke said that to truly diminish the distractions and peripheral activities that diminish nurses’ time with patients, hospitals must fundamentally fix three key areas of inpatient care:
• Facility capacity management (patient logistics)—Establish logistics and central care coordination to get patients where they belong for the right care on time from admission to discharge.
• Diagnostic services management (order logistics)—Centrally orchestrate services for all patients, ensuring on-time and complete delivery of orders while maximizing patient throughput.
• Workload balancing (demand logistics)—Precisely match patient care needs with unit nursing clinical capacity, replacing simple nurse-to-patient ratios that can provide an incomplete picture and lead to overstaffing or understaffing.
“There’s no management policy or quick fix for these challenges that hard working nurses face,” said Kristie Huff, MSN, RN and senior vice president of transformation at Care Logistics. “A hospital must focus as a system to reliably deliver care for all patients, improving communications and handoffs. Nurses at our partner hospitals, which adopt logistical controls and central care coordination, spend less time running around and making phone calls and more time treating patients and advancing their care plans.”
Methodology
The study was conducted online from September through October 2013. Invitations for the survey were emailed to 59,336 RNs, which included those who have been placed by Jackson Healthcare staffing companies and those who have not. 1,333 hospital-based RNs participated in the survey. Respondents were self-selected and represented each specialty and region of the U.S. The error range for this survey is +/- 2.7% at a 95% confidence level. See more at: http://www.jacksonhealthcare.com/media-room/news/jackson-healthcare-study-reveals-bigger-workload-and-less-patient-time-for-hospital-rns.aspx.
About Care Logistics
Care Logistics partners with hospitals to provide the only logistical control system for patient throughput. It combines breakthrough approaches to care coordination and throughput efficiency with innovative hospital logistics software. The result: Reliable and predictable operations that dramatically improve patient throughput, care quality and experience.
Care Logistics operates with a single, purposeful goal: Customer First, Dramatic Results.
For more information, contact Care Logistics at (800) 930-0870, or learn more about the dramatic results Care Logistics customers are achieving at http://www.carelogistics.com.
Doug Walker, Care Logistics, +1 770-643-5692, [email protected]
Share this article