Validation of standard times and influencing factors during the development of the Workload Indicator for Nursing

Operational efficiency effect on nursing workload of tertiary hospital wards in China: A prospective observational study

AIMS

To investigate the effect of ward operational efficiency on nursing workload and identify the factors that influence nursing workload.

BACKGROUND

It remains unclear how and to what extent ward operational efficiency can influence nursing workload.

METHODS

A prospective observational study was conducted from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023, in one tertiary general hospital in China. Purposive and convenience sampling was used, and 266 470 patients from 66 wards and 52 nurses from 13 wards were recruited. The relationships between operational efficiency and nursing workload and the predictors of nursing workload were analyzed. The STROBE guidelines were followed.

RESULTS

The operational characteristics vary by the type of wards. Nursing workloads were positively correlated with case mix index (CMI), rate of level 4 surgery, the number of patients transferred in and out, the number of deaths, total bed days, and the number of emergency admissions and critical illnesses (γs: 0.35-0.56, p < 0.05). And the CMI, rate of level 4 surgery, average bed occupancy rate, number of critically ill patients, and total bed days were the predictors of nursing workload (R2 = 57.3%, p < 0.05).

DISCUSSION

This study is the first to discuss the relationship between operational efficiency and nursing workload on the ward level and offers valuable insights into the nursing workload.

CONCLUSION

The operational efficiency of wards affects the nursing workload and needs to be considered both in the measurement of nursing activities and in the sizing of the nursing staff.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING AND NURSING POLICY

The study findings provide a full understanding of the relationship between ward operation and nurse staffing, which is helpful for nursing managers to formulate scientific nurse staffing policies.

Associations between two nursing workload scales and the cost of intensive care unit nursing staff: A retrospective study of one Belgian hospital

AIMS

The aim of this study was to assess associations between a general nursing funding scale and an intensive care unit specific nursing workload scale and the cost of nursing staff.

BACKGROUND

Nurse staffing represents the most important cost in the intensive care unit, so it is essential to evaluate it accurately. In addition, the assessment of nursing workload is important for the daily management of the intensive care unit and to ensure quality of care.

METHODS

This was a retrospective and quantitative study carried out in the intensive care unit of a Belgian hospital. The extraction of data from the Nursing Activities Score and the Minimum Hospital Summary Nursing Dataset were carried out during 2 periods of 15 days, from 1 June 2018 to 15 June 2018 and from 1 September 2018 to 15 September 2018.

RESULTS

A total of 234 patients were included in the study. A total of 773 Nursing Activities Score and Minimum Hospital Summary Nursing Dataset recordings were analyzed in the study per intensive care unit day. A strong correlation was observed between Nursing Activities Score and Minimum Hospital Summary Nursing Dataset for the entire intensive care unit stay with a rho (95% CI) of .88 (0.83-.93); however, the correlation was moderate per intensive care unit day with a rho of .51 (0.45-0.57). A strong association was observed between the Minimum Hospital Summary Nursing Dataset and the Nursing Activities Score with the costs of intensive care unit nurses with a rho (95% CI) of .78 (0.72-0.86) and .74 (0.65-0.84), respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

A general nursing funding scale in Belgium was strongly correlated with the nursing workload for the whole intensive care unit stay, but this correlation was moderate per intensive care unit day. In contrast, both scales showed a good correlation with intensive care unit nursing costs.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT

In Belgium, a general funding scale for nurses does not allow for an assessment of the nursing workload in the intensive care unit. The Nursing Activities Score is strongly correlated with the cost of nursing staff in the intensive care unit. The authors recommend that the Belgian authorities carry out this type of study in several intensive care units in the country and eventually replace the general funding scale for nurses with the Nursing Activities Score.

Identification of Workload Measurement Indicators for School Nursing Practice

Many school districts rely on caseload or student to school nurse ratios that are not grounded in evidence-based research. There is a need for a comprehensive workload instrument to describe the work of school nurses that incorporates the complexities of the role and includes acuity, care processes, and social determinants of health. The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify workload activities from a previous Delphi study that can be empirically measured as items for a workload instrument. A nationally representative sample of 27 school nurses participated in four focus groups, describing activities important to the measurement of workload. Focus group input resulted in identification and confirmation of workload activities that impact school nurse workload. Use of the National Association of School Nurses' Framework for 21st Century School Nursing Practice™ was integral in capturing gaps and important workload activities for a potential workload instrument.

The Measurement of Pediatric Inpatient Nursing Using the Complexity Assessment and Monitoring to Ensure Optimal Outcomes (CAMEO©) Tool

PURPOSE

Physiologic measurement of patient acuity has been used to predict patient outcomes, length of stay, and resource utilization. To date, these tools are not sufficiently comprehensive to inform nurse staffing assignments and have limited practical application. The Complexity Assessment and Monitoring to Ensure Optimal Outcomes (CAMEO©) acuity tool was initially developed and validated to quantify patient acuity in terms of complexity of nursing cognitive workload in pediatric intensive care units (ICU). This article describes development and implementation of the Inpatient CAMEO© in the pediatric inpatient setting.

DESIGN AND METHODS

Utilizing a modified Delphi technique, an expert panel convened to scale and implement the Inpatient CAMEO© in the pediatric inpatient units through four Delphi rounds.

RESULTS

The expert panel identified care items unique to the pediatric inpatient setting and assigned a cognitive workload scale of 1-5. To consolidate the tool, the panel identified items to be classified as "Standard of Care" and developed a new baseline score for the Inpatient CAMEO©. Expert panel members served as unit-based ambassadors to foster the expansion and implementation of the new Inpatient CAMEO©.

CONCLUSIONS

The Inpatient CAMEO© describes and quantifies acuity beyond the intensive care setting. The implementation and use of the Inpatient CAMEO© was accomplished through unit-based ambassadors and the support of leadership.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Quantifying nursing cognitive workload in both direct and indirect care is important to determining nursing assignments and comprehensive staffing models in the pediatric inpatient setting.

The Safer Nursing Care Tool as a guide to nurse staffing requirements on hospital wards: observational and modelling study

Background

The Safer Nursing Care Tool is a system designed to guide decisions about nurse staffing requirements on hospital wards, in particular the number of nurses to employ (establishment). The Safer Nursing Care Tool is widely used in English hospitals but there is a lack of evidence about how effective and cost-effective nurse staffing tools are at providing the staffing levels needed for safe and quality patient care.

Objectives

To determine whether or not the Safer Nursing Care Tool corresponds to professional judgement, to assess a range of options for using the Safer Nursing Care Tool and to model the costs and consequences of various ward staffing policies based on Safer Nursing Care Tool acuity/dependency measure.

Design

This was an observational study on medical/surgical wards in four NHS hospital trusts using regression, computer simulations and economic modelling. We compared the effects and costs of a ‘high’ establishment (set to meet demand on 90% of days), the ‘standard’ (mean-based) establishment and a ‘flexible (low)’ establishment (80% of the mean) providing a core staff group that would be sufficient on days of low demand, with flexible staff re-deployed/hired to meet fluctuations in demand.

Setting

Medical/surgical wards in four NHS hospital trusts.

Main outcome measures

The main outcome measures were professional judgement of staffing adequacy and reports of omissions in care, shifts staffed more than 15% below the measured requirement, cost per patient-day and cost per life saved.

Data sources

The data sources were hospital administrative systems, staff reports and national reference costs.

Results

In total, 81 wards participated (85% response rate), with data linking Safer Nursing Care Tool ratings and staffing levels for 26,362 wards × days (96% response rate). According to Safer Nursing Care Tool measures, 26% of all ward-days were understaffed by ≥ 15%. Nurses reported that they had enough staff to provide quality care on 78% of shifts. When using the Safer Nursing Care Tool to set establishments, on average 60 days of observation would be needed for a 95% confidence interval spanning 1 whole-time equivalent either side of the mean. Staffing levels below the daily requirement estimated using the Safer Nursing Care Tool were associated with lower odds of nurses reporting ‘enough staff for quality’ and more reports of missed nursing care. However, the relationship was effectively linear, with staffing above the recommended level associated with further improvements. In simulation experiments, ‘flexible (low)’ establishments led to high rates of understaffing and adverse outcomes, even when temporary staff were readily available. Cost savings were small when high temporary staff availability was assumed. ‘High’ establishments were associated with substantial reductions in understaffing and improved outcomes but higher costs, although, under most assumptions, the cost per life saved was considerably less than £30,000.

Limitations

This was an observational study. Outcomes of staffing establishments are simulated.

Conclusions

Understanding the effect on wards of variability of workload is important when planning staffing levels. The Safer Nursing Care Tool correlates with professional judgement but does not identify optimal staffing levels. Employing more permanent staff than recommended by the Safer Nursing Care Tool guidelines, meeting demand most days, could be cost-effective. Apparent cost savings from ‘flexible (low)’ establishments are achieved largely by below-adequate staffing. Cost savings are eroded under the conditions of high temporary staff availability that are required to make such policies function.

Future work

Research is needed to identify cut-off points for required staffing. Prospective studies measuring patient outcomes and comparing the results of different systems are feasible.

Trial registration

Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN12307968.

Funding

This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Services and Delivery Research programme and will be published in full inHealth Services and Delivery Research; Vol. 8, No. 16. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.

Balancing workload of nurses: Linear mixed effects modelling to estimate required nursing time on surgical wards

Aim

Quantifying the relation between patient characteristics and care time and explaining differences in nursing time between wards.

Design

Academic hospital in the Netherlands. Six surgical wards, capacity 15-30 beds, 2012-2014.

Methods

Linear mixed effects model to study the relation between patient characteristics and care time. Estimated marginal means to estimate baseline care time and differences between wards.

Results

Nine patient characteristics significantly related to care time. Most required between 18 and 35 min extra, except "two or more IV/drip/drain" (8) and "one-on-one care" (156). Care time for minimum patient profile: 44-57 min and for average patient profile: 75-88 min. Sources of variation: nurse proficiency, patients, day-to-day variation within patients. The set of characteristics is short, simple and useful for planning and comparing workload. Explained variance up to 36%. Calculating estimated means per ward has not been done before. Nurse proficiency is an important factor.

Scaling the Measurement of Pediatric Acuity Using the Complexity Assessment and Monitoring to Ensure Optimal Outcomes (CAMEO II) Tool

BACKGROUND

The Complexity Assessment and Monitoring to Ensure Optimal Outcomes (CAMEO) acuity tool was developed to quantify patient acuity in terms of nursing cognitive workload complexity. An expert panel including representatives from 4 intensive care units (ICUs) convened to scale and implement the CAMEO II across the ICUs in a large, freestanding children's hospital in the United States.

OBJECTIVES

The aims of this study were to scale and implement a standardized acuity measure of pediatric critical care nursing.

METHOD

This study used a modified Delphi technique.

RESULTS

Through a series of 3 Delphi rounds, the expert panel identified care items not characterized in the original CAMEO and assigned each of these items a cognitive workload scale of 1 to 5. The expert panel identified 4 additional Domains of Care while confirming the original 14 Domains of Care in the first CAMEO version. The panel agreed that a number of care items could be classified as "Standard of Care," reducing items in the CAMEO and generating a baseline score. The panel, serving as ambassadors and unit-based experts, then implemented the refined CAMEO II in each of the 4 ICUs.

DISCUSSION

Utilization of the CAMEO II across ICUs provides a standardized measure to describe and quantify the acuity of pediatric critical care nursing. Use of this acuity measure informs projection of staffing models and benchmarking across pediatric ICUs. Further research is needed to validate the CAMEO II for multisite use.

Nursing workload, nurse staffing methodologies and tools: A systematic scoping review and discussion

Background

The importance of nurse staffing levels in acute hospital wards is widely recognised but evidence for tools to determine staffing requirements although extensive, has been reported to be weak. Building on a review of reviews undertaken in 2014, we set out to give an overview of the major approaches to assessing nurse staffing requirements and identify recent evidence in order to address unanswered questions including the accuracy and effectiveness of tools.

Methods

We undertook a systematic scoping review. Searches of Medline, the Cochrane Library and CINAHL were used to identify recent primary research, which was reviewed in the context of conclusions from existing reviews.

Results

The published literature is extensive and describes a variety of uses for tools including establishment setting, daily deployment and retrospective review. There are a variety of approaches including professional judgement, simple volume-based methods (such as patient-to-nurse ratios), patient prototype/classification and timed-task approaches. Tools generally attempt to match staffing to a mean average demand or time requirement despite evidence of skewed demand distributions. The largest group of recent studies reported the evaluation of (mainly new) tools and systems, but provides little evidence of impacts on patient care and none on costs. Benefits of staffing levels set using the tools appear to be linked to increased staffing with no evidence of tools providing a more efficient or effective use of a given staff resource. Although there is evidence that staffing assessments made using tools may correlate with other assessments, different systems lead to dramatically different estimates of staffing requirements. While it is evident that there are many sources of variation in demand, the extent to which systems can deliver staffing levels to meet such demand is unclear. The assumption that staffing to meet average need is the optimal response to varying demand is untested and may be incorrect.

Conclusions

Despite the importance of the question and the large volume of publication evidence about nurse staffing methods remains highly limited. There is no evidence to support the choice of any particular tool. Future research should focus on learning more about the use of existing tools rather than simply developing new ones. Priority research questions include how best to use tools to identify the required staffing level to meet varying patient need and the costs and consequences of using tools.

Tweetable abstract

Decades of research on tools to determine nurse staffing requirements is largely uninformative. Little is known about the costs or consequences of widely used tools.

Testing the Reliability and Validity of the Nursing Activities Score in Critical Care Nursing

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

The purpose of this study was to test the reliability and validity of the conceptual model of critical care nursing using the Nursing Activities Score (NAS) for intensive care unit (ICU) patients.

METHODS

An observational study conducted in 2011 using the NAS scores of 219 patients in Norway. The inter-rater reliability (IRR) was tested by parallel classifications. The validity was explored by an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) as the measurement models in the structural equation model.

RESULTS

Within the paired ratings the Spearman's correlation coefficient was 0.39. The EFA results explained 77% of the variance with six factors. The reduced CFA model resulted in a three-factor model: relationship, prevention and treatment.

CONCLUSION

The findings supported the IRR and construct validity of the conceptual model of the NAS.

Tecnologia móvel para coleta de dados de pesquisas em saúde

Resumo Objetivo: Descrever o desenvolvimento de aplicativo de tecnologia móvel para coleta de dados em pesquisa de tempo e movimento dos profissionais de saúde do Programa Estratégia de Saúde da Família, na realização das intervenções/atividades de cuidado. Métodos: Pesquisa aplicada de produção tecnológica fundamentada no conceito de prototipagem e nas fases de definição, desenvolvimento e manutenção, para construção e validação de aplicativo do “instrumento de medida de carga de trabalho dos profissionais de saúde na atenção primária”, para dispositivo móvel tablet Motorola® com sistema operacional Android® 3.2, com a finalidade de coletar dados em pesquisa de tempo e movimento, por meio da técnica de amostragem do trabalho e identificar a carga de trabalho de profissionais de saúde, lotados em unidades de saúde da família, localizadas nas cinco regiões geográficas do Brasil, consideradas de ótimo desempenho pelo Programa de Melhoria do Acesso e da Qualidade da Atenção Básica - ciclo 1. Resultados: O aplicativo potencializou a coleta de dados e facilitou as seguintes etapas: registro e armazenamento dos dados; manutenção da integridade da informação; transmissão e armazenamento dos dados; organização e processamento das informações e maior segurança na análise dos resultados. A transmissão e a extração dos dados foram realizadas diariamente, através da sincronização dos arquivos no Dropbox®. O aplicativo eletrônico foi utilizado durante as observações dos 418 profissionais de saúde das 27 unidades de saúde da família, no total foram registrados 85.398 observações de intervenções/atividades. Conclusão: O aplicativo possibilitou uma coleta de dados mais dinâmica; manteve a integridade da informação; auxiliou a transmissão e o armazenamento de dados; facilitou a organização e o processamento das informações e proporcionou maior segurança na análise dos resultados.

Demonstrating the Relationship Between School Nurse Workload and Student Outcomes

This article describes how one very large, diverse school district developed a Student Acuity Tool for School Nurse Assignment and used a logic model to successfully advocate for additional school nurse positions. The logic model included three student outcomes that were evaluated: provide medications and procedures safely and accurately, increase the number of students with a medical home, and increase the number of students with chronic illness that receive case management. Pairing a staffing formula with an evaluation plan that focuses on student outcomes and the priorities of the school district provides a strong case that school nurses are essential and that they contribute to student success.

Factors Related to School Nurse Workload

Recognizing the need for a school nurse workload model based on more than the number of students in a caseload, the National Association of School Nurses issued recommendations related to measuring school nurse workload. Next, a workforce acuity task force (WATF) was charged with identifying the steps needed to further the recommendations. As a first step, the WATF focused on identifying existing literature and practices related to school nurse workload. The purpose of this article is to synthesize and categorize the factors that were identified, delineate sources for collecting and retrieving these factors, and make recommendations for clinicians and researchers interested in developing instruments to measure school nurse workload.

Adecuación de escalas para medir cargas de trabajo mediante metodología de calidad

RESUMEN Objetivo: Determinar cuál de las escalas evaluadas (NEMS y NAS), es más adecuada para Unidades de Cuidados Intensivos aplicando metodología de calidad. Método: Tras identificar como oportunidad de mejora la no adecuación de la escala NEMS para determinar cargas de trabajo de enfermería en UCI, se aplica metodología de los ciclos de mejora a dicha escala y a la NAS, como propuesta de mejora, evaluando los criterios: medición de cargas de trabajo al día y por turno, inclusión de todas las actividades enfermeras, y análisis por paciente y unidad. Resultados: Escala NEMS no muestra diferencias significativas en el cumplimiento (67%). Comparación NEMS-NAS, todos los criterios excepto el 1º, obtienen mejora significativa. NEMS sólo valora el criterio 1 (64,22%), y NAS todos con un cumplimiento para el 1º, 2º y 4º del 64,74%, y el 3º del 100%. Conclusión: La escala NAS es más adecuada para medir cargas de trabajo de enfermería en UCI.

Development of a Subjective Workload Assessment for Nurses: A Human Factors Approach

Background and Purpose: Research has revealed nurses’ perception that traditional workload measures do not adequately capture the complexity of workload. Using a human factors approach to address the multiple and complex dimensions from the subjective perception of the worker, the Subjective Workload Assessment for Nurses (SWAN) was developed. Methods: Survey data from 188 medical-surgical registered nurses were used to establish the instrument’s psychometric properties. Results: SWAN Sections 1, 2, and 3; General Information Form Section 1; and the Nursing Texas Load Index demonstrated internal consistency with this sample. Findings supported interrelationships between activity complexity, performance circumstances, and individual characteristics described in the literature. Conclusion: Further study is needed to refine the SWAN and to establish psychometric properties with nurses in other practice areas.