Hospitals

Nurses are spending more time on paperwork, restocking supplies

A new survey shows that nurses are spending more time on indirect patient care activities […]

A new survey shows that nurses are spending more time on indirect patient care activities like paperwork, traveling to supply rooms and entering medication orders than in the past.

One of the consequences of nurses spending less time directly caring for patients is that more than half of the nurses surveyed said they weren’t satisfied with the scheduling of staff at their facility, according to a new survey from Jackson Healthcare, a hospital staffing company.

According to the survey, 78 percent of nurses reported spending at least two hours of their day on indirect patient care, up from 73 percent two years earlier.

The most common indirect patient-care activities include: documenting information in multiple locations; completing logs, checklists and collecting data; and traveling to equipment supply and dirty utility rooms.

To boost the amount of time that nurses spend caring directly for patients, Jackson Healthcare makes three suggestions: more efficient, simplified charting; increased ancillary support; and reduced nurse-to-patient ratios.

The survey is based on data collected from 420 nursing professionals last year.

[Photo by flickr user BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives]

 

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