TECHNOLOGY
the equitable allocation of nursing duties , control costs and improve patient care quality . With this in mind , here are the five main benefits of an acuity-based approach in the NHS :
1 . Revolutionize patient care . The Keogh review states that “ organizations should use data and other intelligence for the forensic pursuit of quality improvement and nurse staffing levels .” The skill mix of nurses should also reflect the caseload and severity of illness of the patients . Acuity-based staffing tools empower nurses to use workload values , which take into account the complexity of ward activities and the nursing skill mix to make optimal patient / staff assignments .
‘ Staffing levels should be regularly assessed to see whether staff requirements are being met ’
2 . Consistent safe staffing . Nursing managers should be routinely monitoring shift-to-shift levels to ensure safe staffing numbers .
According to NIce , there is no single nursing staff to patient ratio that can be applied across all wards in any trust , so certain factors should be assessed when determining staff requirements – with the needs of individual patients being the driving factor . Furthermore , staffing levels should be regularly assessed to see whether staff requirements are being met .
Today , many trusts still use a resource-intensive paper-based process to measure acuity and staffing levels – which is advised by the NHS institute to happen twice a year . However , this is unreliable , as it assumes patient and staff activity is constant ,
18 January 2015