Key Flow Processes on Wards

Abstract

Objective: The aim of the study is to test a new nurse movement route analysis (NMRA) method for measuring nurses’ traffic volume between rooms on wards. Background: The World Health Organization calls for urgent investment in nurses. On the other hand, the challenges in the availability, direct care activity, and staffing of registered nurses make increasing the quality of care by process improvement a central objective for nursing. Method: The method is based on cellular operations with from/to matrix that describes nurse movements between rooms on a ward. The NMRA can be implemented by traditional manual observation or with a novel internet-of-things solution named SKAnalysis. Results: The greatest nurse flows led to patient rooms, nurses’ stations, and medicine rooms. The manual NMRA recorded a total of 3,040 room visits by nurses; visits to patient rooms accounted for 33% of all room visits, while visits to nurses’ stations accounted for 28%, and visits to the medicine room for 10%. The internet-of-things NMRA recorded a total of 25,841 room visits by nurses; patient room visits accounted for about 43% of all room visits, while nurses’ station visits accounted for 26% and medicine room visits for about 8%. Based on the results, researchers present the development examples and priorities for nursing. Conclusions: NMRA works and is a new universal method for analyzing nurses’ traffic which is a basic premise for improving working methods and productivity on the wards. Internet-of-things solution makes the implementation of NMRA six times more efficient than by the manual NMRA.