News spotlight: Hospital increases time nurses spend with patients
Nurse Leader Weekly, January 18, 2010
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Nurses on a med-surg unit at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, MI, used to spend only 30% of their time with patients. Now they spend 62% of their time in direct patient care.
Samuel Flanders, MD, senior vice president and chief quality officer, says the organization started a Lean project to identify time wasters and then conducted a variety of rapid improvements.
Flanders and other staff members spent a day shadowing nurses and found they spent a lot of time looking for medical supplies and equipment. To solve this problem, the hospital created more efficient equipment zones and installed computers in patient rooms so nurses could easily enter and retrieve data while with patients.
One of the noteworthy ways the hospital found to save nurses’ time was to chain pill cutters to the wall. Now staff always have pill cutters on hand, and no longer have to spend time hunting for ones that have disappeared.
Source: CrainsDetroit (MI)
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