Nursing Blog

There have been tremendous changes affected in the working of the hospitals with computerization taking the place of manual recording. But as far as nursing protocol and patient history is concerned, it is still following the same old path, it is a common practice for the nurse going off duty, when the new shift begins the outgoing nurse briefs the incoming nurse about the health status of the patients in the previous shift.

There is possibility of devising nurse care plans with the aid of vast changes in the technology influenced by advancement and conveniences with which new technology can be adopted by the nurses. Having made nurse care plan for a patient on the computer and with the advantage of networked computers any of the health care professional can have access to specific nurse care plan and implement the same. The advantage is the nurse can update any changes considered necessary and the concerned nurse after change of duty can view the nurse care plans and implement.       

Now there is no necessity of looking at the notes left by the previous nurse, every thing one can find updated on the computer. The important messages can be communicated through computer boards.

Welcoming Revolutionary Changes:

Modernization of facilities at Nurse Care Plans is welcomed by all, rather it is being awaited eagerly. The nurse station should have the looks of as flight board at air ports, where all current information is displayed so that the nurse learns, which patient is coming and which one is likely to go so that necessary preparations can be made of receiving the patient or sending the patient with completed discharge records. With all the data available on the board one can update the details of what happened during the shift and act in administering of medicines viewing the prescription of the doctor.

Instead of passing the information to one nurse, who communicates with subsequent nurses orally, there are chances of communication gaps and resulting into lapses of grave consequences for the patient under treatment.

The change is taking place slowly, but one day the above is going to happen, the earliest the better. Medical community is used to computerization. The medical documents are already on the computers leaving the paper bound documents far behind and all this happened in few years only. The hospital administrators shall also realize this and shall go ahead with the plans. Every one shall be working independently saved from the dependence on others for petty things.

Drawbacks of Paper Documentation:

Patient’s history requires lot of paper work and difficult to store and search manually, whereas after computerization patients histories can be searched online from any where within the hospital complex from a computer terminal by the doctors, the registered nurses and administrators.

This shall bring speed, efficiency and accuracy besides there shall be no need of manually searching, storing. Taking the heavy to the right person after lapse of crucial time and bringing it back to be stored can be avoided. There shall be lot of saving of man hours of orderlies, which can be saved for other tasks.

The present situation of recruiting nurses, therapists, pharmacists etc. is very tough. Reputed Nurse Agencies are better placed to provide nursing staff of all categories to the hospitals and nursing homes.

The statistics suggest that presently 84 % of US hospitals are understaffed and their service is affected due to nursing staff shortages experienced by them. With the present nursing shortage the situation is going to be worse in the following years as expressed by the American Hospital Association.   

Registered Nurses Availability v/s Requirement:

The requirement of nurses is much higher than the requirement and in a short time it is not possible to get these nurses so quickly even in spite new training programs launched. The shortage of nursing staff is so severe that besides the suffering at the hospital set ups, there is no availability of nurses for community welfare programs. About half a century before there was never any shortage in the nursing staff felt. Considering the long term need of nurses, the present shortage is going to exceed in it’s dimensions beyond imagination.

Even with the arrival of offshore nurses, the shortage is bound to remain since the shortage. The shortage experienced is in certain specific high skilful areas of specialization like kidney dialysis, surgery and intensive care departments. 

Wrong way of Managing Nurse Shortage:

It is a sad situation that the hospitals are resorting to deployment of traveling nurses can be compared to a situation selecting a less effective solution, when the need is of a solution many times potent. Use of travel nurse in place of low salary staff has capability producing an imbalance in already staff in short supply. Some nurses may leave to become a travel nurse because of capability of earning more. This situation is required to be reversed to prevent further damage of understaffing of nurses.

Thinking of travel nurses, temporary staffing agencies become expensive short term solutions affecting profitability, staff moral and retention aspects resulting into shortfall in the level of patient care.

By resorting to overtime payment to get, additional services from low level staff, results in poor performance of the nurses besides inflated budgeted expenditure.

Based on the analysis carried out by AONE, the expenditure per Registered nurse is $50,000 partly accounted for with balance unaccounted in a year.

The actual total costs of turnover are $42,000 per medical/ surgical RN and $64,000 per specialty nurse.

The Benefits of Availing Nurse Agency:

It is possible to get benefit from long term solution and correct the staff crisis with prescreened nurses with total guarantee regarding candidates procured through reputed nurse agencies. One also benefits in cutting cost in selection process of the nurses by self involvement. One saves on time spent in selection process. Some of the benefits can be viewed as below:

• More retention Time for the Nurses, by signing a 36 months contract with the nurses secured through reputed nursing agency.
• Ready availability of adequately trained nurses and therapists.
• Meeting the affordability criteria, there is likely hood of saving around 40 %.
• Increase in the profitability or the healthcare facility.
• Better performance because newly hired nurses are highly motivated in comparison to other nurses in contrast to traveling nurses.
• Nursing agency takes care of al the matters related to immigration support and searching the creditworthiness of the nurse before considered for appointment.