Prescription for improvement- Releasing time to care though innovative approaches to medication management

Background In July 2015 the Productive Ward programme was introduced to an acute surgical ward in the author’s institution. “Productive Ward” aims to increase the amount of time nurses spend directly caring for... [ view full abstract ]

Background
In July 2015 the Productive Ward programme was introduced to an acute surgical ward in the author’s institution.

“Productive Ward” aims to increase the amount of time nurses spend directly caring for patients by reducing waste, improving the ward environment and making nursing processes more efficient.

In December 2015 an interdisciplinary effort between Nursing and Pharmacy staff led to improvements with our medication management process which centred around a trial of individual patient dispensing of non-stock medicines.

Aim and objectives
1. Increase the time nurses spend directly caring for patients
2. Increase the efficiency of medicines management on the ward

Description of innovation
We trialled and tested individual patient dispensing of non-stock medicines and changed how nurses organised the medication trolley and medication rounds.

Time in motion studies and audits of medicine rounds were used to measure outcomes

Our quality improvement project fundamentally depended on extensive staff engagement and empowerment to examine a core nursing task and create sustainable innovations to improve clinical practice.

Impact of innovation
Our audit data revealed that nursing staff spent an average of 4 hours 45 minutes and 36 seconds on medicine rounds each day.

Our improvements reduced this time by 53% to 2 hours and 34 minutes.

To put this in context our efforts released 2 hours 11 minutes and 36 seconds of nursing time per day that can be put back into patient care.

Conclusions and implications
Staff feedback was extremely positive. Over a year the nursing time released from medicine rounds accumulates to a remarkable 736 hours, 57 minutes and 36 seconds.

This presentation focuses the quality improvement process and nursing time released to care however other benefits related to error reduction, stock management and most notably an opportunity to use our data to inform activity based funding- present exciting opportunities for further improvements.