Paper
Thursday, 20 July 2006
This presentation is part of : Creating an Evidence-Based Nursing Environment: Strategies & Initiatives
Identifying the Concept of Complexity Compression
Kathleen E. Krichbaum, MS, PhD1, Christine Mueller, PhD1, Carol Diemert, MS2, and Patty Koenig, BSN3. (1) School of Nursing, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA, (2) Minnesota Nurses Association, St. Paul, MN, USA, (3) Allina Hospitals and Clinics, Mercy Hospital, Coon Rapids, MN, USA
Learning Objective #1: describe the phenomenon experienced by nurses called "complexity compression"
Learning Objective #2: evaluate the validity of complexity compression in your own work experience as a nurse based on evidence to date.
It has been documented that up to 40% of the workday of nurses is taken up by meeting the ever-increasing demands of the systems of health care delivery in which nurses are employed. These demands include the need for increasing documentation, for learning new and seemingly ever-changing procedures, and for adapting to turnover in management and administration. Attention to these issues also means that 40% of that workday is not available to patients. Believing that these increasing demands are affecting nurses’ decisions to remain in nursing or to leave, a group of Minnesota nurses and nurse educators examined the work environments of nurses and the issues related to those environments. The result of this examination was discovery of a phenomenon affecting all nurses that may be central to the projected shortage of nurses. The phenomenon is complexity compression, what nurses experience when expected to assume additional, unplanned responsibilities while simultaneously conducting their multiple responsibilities in a condensed time frame. The phenomenon was validated by a group of 58 nurses who participated in focus groups that led to the identification of factors influencing the experience of complexity compression. These factors were clustered into six major themes: personal, environmental, practice, systems and technology, administration/management and autonomy/control. Further validation studies are planned with the population of practicing professional nurses in the state of Minnesota.

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