Back to basics boosts patient care

A back-to-basics project has meant nurses at the Royal United Hospital are now spending around 25 per cent more of their shifts on one-to-one patient care.

Before the initiative was launched, even nurses in the hospital's intensive therapy unit - where the sickest patients are being treated - were spending only 48 per cent of their time on direct care.

Now that figure has risen to 73 per cent after the success of the Bath hospital's Well Organised Ward (WOW) project.

The scheme - which sees staff rethinking the way they work to eliminate time-wasting and inefficiency in areas such as equipment storage - is now being used on several other wards as well as the hi-tech ITU.

RUH assistant director of nursing Sharon Bonson has been working with staff to take forward ideas suggested in the project.

She said: "The WOW project has encouraged staff to look at what, how and why they do things with fresh eyes. "They are coming up with all sorts of ways to make us more efficient, which gives us a bit more time to do what we do best.

"Some of the simplest ideas - from changing the way equipment is stored and accessed, to the more complex - changing how we manage a patient's care, is having an impact. It's not rocket science, but it works."

The scheme is part of the national Productive Ward initiative which was developed by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, after it was discovered that, on average, registered nurses spent only 40 per cent of their time providing direct patient care.

A new purpose-built storage system is now being used in the ITU and on other hospital wards which sees stock kept in barcoded drawers rather than shelving, with their contents entered on a database.

As well as getting to it more quickly, staff can find what they are looking for straightaway, and stock levels are easily monitored and maintained.

Wards are also using a new white board system which shows a patient's status at a glance, with a traffic light system using red, amber and green magnets highlighting a stage or the next step in someone's care.

Ms Bonson said: "The best organisations have to continually strive to increase quality and efficiency, and the improvements achieved by staff have allowed more time for the things that matter, namely providing excellent quality, safe and courteous care to patients."