In times of scarce resources, spending time or money on a project is a serious commitment of valuable resources. Three years ago, the leadership team in medical surgical nursing decided that quality care was largely dependent upon a well-educated, accountable and consistent staff. We felt that if we established a foundation based on high-level expectations we could make improvements that would affect not only the quality of care provided, but also staff and patient satisfaction. We hoped that our commitment to improving the patient care environment would also affect the problems of high nursing vacancies, turnover and supplemental staffing.
Our greatest concerns lay in establishing baseline level knowledge, so we started with needs surveys that included staff input, critical patient care events and new innovations. We used many resources to help us to promote and support the concept of life-long learning by funding continuing education and developing departmentally based inservice education programs.
After focusing on these areas through a number of interventions, we have been overwhelmed by the connection between our commitment to quality patient care and significant improvements in departmental stability. Comparing September 2001 to September 2002, reductions were noted in nursing vacancies (2%), nursing turnover (7.5%) and supplemental staffing from 32% to 18%. With comparable departmental occupancy of 85%, monthly expenses were almost $200,000 lower in September 2002.
Next steps include reviewing upcoming data from annual prevalence survey and patient and staff satisfaction sources to determine if a comparable return on investment is evident.
Back to Initiating Evidence-Based, Data-Driven Change in a Medical Surgical Nursing Department
Back to 14th International Nursing Research Congress
Sigma Theta Tau International
10-12 July 2003