| Learning Objective #1: Identify the need to provide readily accessible ways for staff nurses to report issues that interfere with their ability to provide patient care | |||
| Learning Objective #2: Learn how collegiality and interdisciplinary collaboration solved a variety of system issues that had been interfering with staff nurses' ability to provide direct patient care |
We set up a phone line and invited staff nurses from throughout this Magnet hospital to call 24/7 to report their frustrations. Their calls were brief, anonymous, and fell into 12 areas: admissions, computer, dietary, engineering, human resources, laboratory, materials management, pharmacy, physician, respiratory, transportation, and miscellaneous TIMETAKERS.
The Chief Nursing Officer met with her colleague Vice-Presidents to explain nursing's concerns about being drawn from the patient bedside, often completely off the nursing unit, to perform essential non-nursing activities. Once she had their support, collaborative work began.
Each Associate Director of Nursing chaired one of 12 teams of nurses which worked simultaneously to address the issues. The TIMETAKERS teams worked by phone, e-mail, and in face-to-face meetings with colleagues in other departments to address the multiplicity of frustrations reported by staff nurses.
Responding to this creative innovation in leadership, our staff nurses called around the clock to report system glitches interfering with their ability to provide efficient patient care. We heard their voices and involved the entire hospital in acting on their concerns.
The teamwork and outcomes of our TIMETAKERS initiative vividly illustrate nurse caring and shared governance in action, and our efforts are recognized as an effective, collaborative, hospital-wide, patient focused quality improvement success.