Cutting Waste So Nurses Can Better Care for Patients

The Problem

Administrative burdens and inefficient processes left nurses spending just one-third of their time caring for patients on the 52-bed medical/surgical unit. Most of their time was doing paperwork, hunting down supplies, documents and people and other non-direct care activities. Nurses likened working on the unit to hard labor. Nurse turnover was 65 percent.

The Solution

Patient-centered care, as the IOM points out, is a foundational domain of high quality health care. To provide such care, nurses need to be able to spend more time providing direct patient care. Nurses undertook wide-ranging steps—including technological, workflow and communication changes—in order to get nurses back to what they do best, caring for patients.