Investigation of the causes and effects of stress in nurses working 'floating shifts'.

BACKGROUND: Nurses working in hospitals may occasionally be reassigned to other wards for various reasons, for example to cover sudden absences or to support heavier-than-usual workloads. This practice is known as 'floating shifts'. AIM: To assess how nurses are affected by the stress of working floating shifts, to understand what causes and alleviates this stress and to identify strategies that can be used to reduce stress. METHOD: A cross-sectional research study which used an online survey. RESULTS: Data were collected from 1,334 nurses in nine Finnish hospitals. Of these respondents, 63% (n=846) had worked floating shifts. Data analysis showed that having worked floating shifts in the past 12 months was not associated with increased reports of ongoing stress. However, respondents identified factors that they found stressful during floating shifts, such as the lack of a work partner. CONCLUSION: Nurse managers should consider how floating shifts are administered so that nurses feel supported when working on a different ward or unit. Nurse managers can greatly influence nurses' ability to manage floating shifts.

Sleep improvement intervention and its effect on patients' sleep on the ward.

AIM AND OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study was to investigate how the sleep improvement interventions developed for the wards were associated with patients' sleep. The objective was to promote patients' sleep. BACKGROUND: The quality of sleep is vital for patients' health and recovery from illness. However, patients generally sleep poorly during hospitalisation. Sleep-disturbing factors are connected to the hospital environment, patients' physical illness, emotional state and the activities of the staff. Many sleep-disturbing factors can be influenced by appropriate nursing interventions. DESIGN: A two-group intervention study including the development of nursing interventions aimed at supporting patients' sleep. One group received a sleep promotion intervention and the other received standard care. Both groups evaluated their sleep in the morning. METHODS: A survey of participants' sleep evaluations was collected with the five-item Richards-Campbell Sleep Questionnaire. The data were analysed statistically. The STROBE checklist was used to report the study. RESULTS: From the participants' perspective, sleep was better in the intervention group, even though statistically significantly only among men. The pain intensity correlated with sleep quality. The number of patients in the room or whether participants had had an operation had no effect on their sleep evaluations. CONCLUSIONS: Interventions targeted at supporting and promoting the sleep quality of hospital inpatients may be effective. They should be developed in collaboration with patients and nurses. Several nursing interventions can be proposed to promote better sleep among patients; however, more research is needed to confirm the results. Sleep promotion should include both standardised protocols and individualised sleep support. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Investing in nursing interventions to promote patients' sleep is important. Patients' individual sleep-related needs should be part of their care plan. Training programmes that support nurses' knowledge and skills of patients' sleep promotion should be part of nursing education in healthcare organisations.

Identifying nurse managers' essential information needs in daily unit operation in perioperative settings.

Aim: To identify nurse managers' essential information needs in daily unit operation in perioperative settings. Design: Qualitative and quantitative descriptive design. Methods: The study consisted of (I) generation of an item pool of potential information needs, (II) assessment of the item pool by an expert panel and (III) confirming the essential information needs of nurse managers in daily unit operation with a survey (N = 288). Content validity index values were calculated for the assessments by expert panel and in the survey. Internal consistency of the final item pool was explored with Cronbach's alpha. The data were collected from 2011-2015. Results: During the study process, the number of essential information needs decreased from 92-41. The final item pool consisted of 12 subthemes, and they were categorized into four main themes: patient's care process, surgical procedure, human resources and tangible resources. The findings can be used to create a knowledge map for information system purposes.

Comparing the Two Techniques for Nursing Staff Rescheduling to Streamline Nurse Managers' Daily Work in Finland.

The aim of this study was to identify nurse managers' daily tasks during the rescheduling of sudden nursing staff absences by comparing two techniques: a paper-based system as phone calls and emails or information technology-based staffing systems. In addition, it is intended to evaluate the usability of information technology-based staffing solutions and evaluate estimated cost savings by using hospital permanent staff to cover sudden absences. A quasi-experimental pretest and posttest one-group study design was used to evaluate nurse managers' (n = 61) daily tasks (n = 5800) during rescheduling nursing staff sudden absences (n = 2628); furthermore, we engaged in observations and provided estimates of cost savings generated by our proposed intervention. The number of nurse manager tasks during rescheduling decreased significantly (P < .001) as well as unstaffed shifts (P < .001) and unplanned shift changes (P < .001) after the information technology-based scheduling system was implemented. The usability score ranged from 76 to 100, showing that the information technology-based scheduling solution has good usability. The use of information technology-based staffing solution can streamline the rescheduling process, save nurse managers time for other activities, and offer organizations opportunities for cost savings.

Information needs in day-to-day operations management in hospital units: A cross-sectional national survey.

AIM: To describe and compare shift leaders' important information needs by profession, unit, time of day and type of hospital. BACKGROUND: Professionals responsible for care provision in hospital units make ad hoc decisions about available resources to meet patient care needs but, currently, much effort is needed to obtain the necessary information to support decision making. METHODS: This survey was carried out in nine randomly chosen hospitals in Finland. Nurses and physicians responsible for day-to-day operations were eligible to participate (N = 873). The response rate was 65% (n = 570, including 453 nurses and 111 physicians). Data were collected in 2015-2016 using the Hospital Shift Leaders' Information Needs Questionnaire with 114 information need items. RESULTS: Shift leaders reported many real-time information needs. Nurses' important information needs concerned patients, personnel, and materials, and physicians' needs focused on patient care. Large mean differences existed in the needs between nurses and physicians, and imaging units when compared to other units. CONCLUSION: Real-time information systems for shift leaders should consider the needs of different users to support shared situational awareness and operational intelligence. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: The important information-need items identified here may be used in designing and developing information systems that better support shift leaders' work in hospitals.

Ontology Development for Patient Education Documents Using a Professional- and Patient-Oriented Delphi Method.

Written patient education materials are essential to motivate and help patients to participate in their own care, but the production and management of a large collection of high-quality and easily accessible patient education documents can be challenging. Ontologies can aid in these tasks, but the existing resources are not directly applicable to patient education. An ontology that models patient education documents and their readers was constructed. The Delphi method was used to identify a compact but sufficient set of entities with which the topics of documents may be described. The preferred terms of the entities were also considered to ensure their understandability. In the ontology, readers may be characterized by gender, age group, language, and role (patient or professional), whereas documents may be characterized by audience, topic(s), and content, as well as the time and place of use. The Delphi method yielded 265 unique document topics that are organized into seven hierarchies. Advantages and disadvantages of the ontology design, as well as possibilities for improvements, were identified. The patient education material ontology can enhance many applications, but further development is needed to reach its full potential.

Assessing managerial information needs: Modification and evaluation of the Hospital Shift Leaders' Information Needs Questionnaire.

AIMS: The aims were (1) to evaluate the modified version of the Intensive Care Unit Information Need Questionnaire for the broader hospital setting, and (2) to describe the differences in respondents' managerial activities and information needs according to the position held by the respondent and the type of hospital unit. BACKGROUND: Information systems do not support managerial decision-making sufficiently and information needed in the day-to-day operations management in hospital units is unknown. METHODS: An existing questionnaire was modified and evaluated. Shift leaders, that is, the nurses and physicians responsible for the day-to-day operations management in hospital units were reached using purposive sampling (n = 258). RESULTS: The questionnaire ascertained the importance of information. Cronbach's α ranged from .85-.96 for the subscales. Item - total correlations showed good explanatory power. Managerial activities and information needs differed between respondents in different positions, although all shared about one-third of important information needs. The response rate was 26% (n = 67). CONCLUSIONS: The validity and reliability of the questionnaire were good. Attention should be paid to the positions of shift leaders when developing information systems. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: The questionnaire can be used to determine important information when developing information systems to support day-to-day operations management in hospitals.

A real-time Excel-based scheduling solution for nursing staff reallocation.

Aim This article describes the development and testing of an Excel-based scheduling solution for the flexible allocation and reallocation of nurses to cover sudden, unplanned absences among permanent nursing staff. Method A quasi-experimental, one group, pre- and post-test study design was used ( Box 1 ) with total sampling. Participants (n=17) were selected purposefully by including all ward managers (n=8) and assistant ward managers (n=9) from one university hospital department. The number of sudden absences among the nursing staff was identified during two 4-week data collection periods (pre- and post-test). Results During the use of the paper-based scheduling system, 121 absences were identified; during the use of the Excel-based system, 106 were identified. The main reasons for the use of flexible 'floating' nurses were sick leave (n=66) and workload (n=31). Other reasons (n=29) included patient transfer to another hospital, scheduling errors and the start or end of employment. Conclusion The Excel-based scheduling solution offered better support in obtaining substitute labour inside the organisation, with smaller employment costs. It also reduced the number of tasks ward managers had to carry out during the process of reallocating staff.

Decision-Making to Support Smooth Daily Unit Operation in Perioperative Settings.

Decision-making in daily unit operation in perioperative settings needs to be smooth. Decision support systems are mainly used as help in this situation. These systems reduce the possibility of risks caused by poor communication. But the decisions and dimensions of the decisions made by nurse manager are still unsolved. The aim of our study was to describe the timeframe of the decisions made by nurse managers in the daily unit operation in perioperative settings. The results indicated that nurse managers made operational and tactical decisions. These operational and tactical decisions happened coincide during the nurse managers shift. The nurse managers were repeatly interrupted in decision-making.

Nurse managers' decision-making in daily unit operation in peri-operative settings: a cross-sectional descriptive study.

AIM: To describe the tactical and the operational decisions made by nurse managers when managing the daily unit operation in peri-operative settings. BACKGROUND: Management is challenging as situations change rapidly and decisions are constantly made. Understanding decision-making in this complex environment helps to develop decision support systems to support nurse managers' operative and tactical decision-making. DESIGN: Descriptive cross-sectional design. METHOD: Data were collected from 20 nurse managers with the think-aloud method during the busiest working hours and analysed using thematic content analysis. RESULTS: Nurse managers made over 700 decisions; either ad hoc (n = 289), near future (n = 268) or long-term (n = 187) by nature. Decisions were often made simultaneously with many interruptions. Ad hoc decisions covered staff allocation, ensuring adequate staff, rescheduling surgical procedures, confirmation tangible resources and following-up the daily unit operation. Decisions in the near future were: planning of surgical procedures and tangible resources, and planning staff allocation. Long-term decisions were: human recourses, nursing development, supplies and equipment, and finances in the unit. CONCLUSIONS: Decision-making was vulnerable to interruptions, which sometimes complicated the managing tasks. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: The results can be used when planning decision support systems and when defining the nurse managers' tasks in peri-operative settings.

An Integrative Literature Review of Organisational Factors Associated with Admission and Discharge Delays in Critical Care.

The literature shows that delayed admission to the intensive care unit (ICU) and discharge delays from the ICU are associated with increased adverse events and higher costs. Identifying factors related to delays will provide information to practice improvements, which contribute to better patient outcomes. The aim of this integrative review was to explore the incidence of patients' admission and discharge delays in critical care and to identify organisational factors associated with these delays. Seven studies were included. The major findings are as follows: (1) explanatory research about discharge delays is scarce and one study on admission delays was found, (2) delays are a common problem mostly due to organisational factors, occurring in 38% of admissions and 22-67% of discharges, and (3) redesigning care processes by improving information management and coordination between units and interdisciplinary teams could reduce discharge delays. In conclusion, patient outcomes can be improved through efficient and safe care processes. More exploratory research is needed to identify factors that contribute to admission and discharge delays to provide evidence for clinical practice improvements. Shortening delays requires an interdisciplinary and multifaceted approach to the whole patient flow process. Conclusions should be made with caution due to the limited number of articles included in this review.

Predicting patient acuity from electronic patient records.

BACKGROUND: The ability to predict acuity (patients' care needs), would provide a powerful tool for health care managers to allocate resources. Such estimations and predictions for the care process can be produced from the vast amounts of healthcare data using information technology and computational intelligence techniques. Tactical decision-making and resource allocation may also be supported with different mathematical optimization models. METHODS: This study was conducted with a data set comprising electronic nursing narratives and the associated Oulu Patient Classification (OPCq) acuity. A mathematical model for the automated assignment of patient acuity scores was utilized and evaluated with the pre-processed data from 23,528 electronic patient records. The methods to predict patient's acuity were based on linguistic pre-processing, vector-space text modeling, and regularized least-squares regression. RESULTS: The experimental results show that it is possible to obtain accurate predictions about patient acuity scores for the coming day based on the assigned scores and nursing notes from the previous day. Making same-day predictions leads to even better results, as access to the nursing notes for the same day boosts the predictive performance. Furthermore, textual nursing notes allow for more accurate predictions than previous acuity scores. The best results are achieved by combining both of these information sources. The developed model achieves a concordance index of 0.821 when predicting the patient acuity scores for the following day, given the scores and text recorded on the previous day. CONCLUSIONS: By applying language technology to electronic patient documents it is possible to accurately predict the value of the acuity scores of the coming day based on the previous daýs assigned scores and nursing notes.

Crucial information needs of ICU charge nurses in Finland and Greece.

AIMS: To describe crucial information needs of ICU charge nurses, and to compare these needs in two countries in Europe. BACKGROUND: ICU charge nurses are on the front line for ensuring that the activities of their units are running smoothly. They are accountable for making sure that the right tasks are performed under the right circumstances, with the right people, at the right time. DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS: An online survey based on a previous observation study regarding the ad hoc decision-making of ICU shift leaders. A total of 257 Finnish and 50 Greek ICU charge nurses participated in this study, from 17 Finnish and 16 Greece ICUs for adults. METHODS: Our survey incorporated 122 statements divided into six dimensions (patient admission, organization and management of work, allocation of staff, allocation of material, special treatments and patient discharge) with a rating scale from 0 to 10. Analysis involved descriptive statistics. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare the answers of the two countries. Validity was verified with confirmatory factor analysis and the reliability was tested with Cronbach's α values. RESULTS: The most crucial information needs of ICU charge nurses concerned the overall organization and management of work. Both staff-related and individual patient-related information was needed. Information needs of Finnish and Greek charge nurses concerned similar kinds of situations in ICUs. However, there were some differences that might depend on the cultural differences between the countries. CONCLUSIONS: Accurate and real-time information is a prerequisite for ICU charge nurses' ad hoc decision-making during daily care management. Identification of the most crucial information is needed when tools for information management are developed. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: The results of this study indicated that a major portion of immediate information needs of ICU charge nurses are internationally common in similar settings.

National survey focusing on the crucial information needs of intensive care charge nurses and intensivists: same goal, different demands.

BACKGROUND: Although information technology adequately supports clinical care in many intensive care units (ICUs), it provides much poorer support for the managerial information needed to coordinate multi-professional care. To gain a general view of the most crucial multi-professional information needs of ICU shift leaders a national survey was conducted, focusing on the information needs of charge nurses and intensivists. METHODS: Based on our previous observation study an online survey was developed, containing 122 information need statements related to the decision-making of ICU shift leaders. Information need statements were divided into six dimensions: patient admission, organisation and management of work, allocation of staff and material resources, special treatments, and patient discharge. This survey involved all ICU shift leaders (n = 738) who worked in any of the 17 highest level ICUs for adults in university hospitals in Finland during the autumn of 2009. Both charge nurses' and intensivists' crucial information needs for care coordination were evaluated. RESULTS: Two hundred and fifty-seven (50%) charge nurses and 96 (43%) intensivists responded to the survey. The consistency of the survey was found to be good (Cronbach's α scores between .87-.97, with a total explanatory power of 64.53%). Altogether, 57 crucial information needs for care coordination were found; 22 of which were shared between shift leaders. The most crucial of these information needs were related to organisation and management, patient admission, and allocation of staff resources. The associations between working experience, or shift leader acting frequencies, and crucial information needs were not statistically significant. However, a statistically significant difference was found between the number of ICU beds and the ICU experience of charge nurses with information needs, under the dimension of organisation and management of work. The information needs of charge nurses and intensivists differed. Charge nurses' information needs related to care coordination, were more varied, and concerned issues at a unit level, whereas intensivists focused on direct patient care. CONCLUSIONS: The reliability and validity of our survey was found to be good. Our study findings show that care coordination at an ICU is a collaborative process among ICU shift leaders with multiprofessional information needs related to organisation and management, patient admission, and allocation of staff resources. Study findings can be used to identify the most crucial information needs of ICU shift leaders when new information technology is developed to support managerial decision-making during care coordination.

Information utilization in tactical decision making of middle management health managers.

Healthcare is an information-intensive field, as information is needed to make strategic, tactical, and operational decisions. The purpose of this study was to identify the tactical decisions that middle management healthcare managers make, the information that is available, and the necessary information that is missing using the cardiac care process as an example. Data were collected through focused interviews of nurses and physicians who work in middle management in a secondary healthcare field. The interviews were coded and analyzed using the thematic content analysis method. We identified two main categories of tactical decisions: those concerning the process of care and those concerning the resources for the care. We termed the categories "process decisions" and "resource decisions." The availability of information varied. Much of the necessary information was created and processed manually. Our results show that the collection, mining, and systematic use of information are difficult because of the existence of many types of information systems and their varying abilities to produce and report information. Finally, much of the important information is missing. In conclusion, the information management process in healthcare settings needs to be improved, and a new generation of information system is needed to support tactical decision making in middle management.

Describing the sublanguage of wound care in an adult ICU.

Comprehensive wound documentation is an important tool in evaluating and planning patient care. The sublanguage used in ICUs may affect negatively to the wound care and thus to the healing process. We made a quantitative content analysis of nursing documentation of cardiac surgery adult patients (n=60) who had stayed over four days in the ICU. The sublanguage used in nursing documentation of wounds and ulcers in the ICU was unstructured with many words of colloquial language, misspellings and abbreviations. The documentation did not cover all aspects of proper wound care. The information technology could be helpful for nurses to document right things with plain language.

Characteristics of Finnish and Swedish intensive care nursing narratives: a comparative analysis to support the development of clinical language technologies.

BACKGROUND: Free text is helpful for entering information into electronic health records, but reusing it is a challenge. The need for language technology for processing Finnish and Swedish healthcare text is therefore evident; however, Finnish and Swedish are linguistically very dissimilar. In this paper we present a comparison of characteristics in Finnish and Swedish free-text nursing narratives from intensive care. This creates a framework for characterising and comparing clinical text and lays the groundwork for developing clinical language technologies. METHODS: Our material included daily nursing narratives from one intensive care unit in Finland and one in Sweden. Inclusion criteria for patients were an inpatient period of least five days and an age of at least 16 years. We performed a comparative analysis as part of a collaborative effort between Finnish- and Swedish-speaking healthcare and language technology professionals that included both qualitative and quantitative aspects. The qualitative analysis addressed the content and structure of three average-sized health records from each country. In the quantitative analysis 514 Finnish and 379 Swedish health records were studied using various language technology tools. RESULTS: Although the two languages are not closely related, nursing narratives in Finland and Sweden had many properties in common. Both made use of specialised jargon and their content was very similar. However, many of these characteristics were challenging regarding development of language technology to support producing and using clinical documentation. CONCLUSIONS: The way Finnish and Swedish intensive care nursing was documented, was not country or language dependent, but shared a common context, principles and structural features and even similar vocabulary elements. Technology solutions are therefore likely to be applicable to a wider range of natural languages, but they need linguistic tailoring. AVAILABILITY: The Finnish and Swedish data can be found at: http://www.dsv.su.se/hexanord/data/.

Managing daily intensive care activities: an observational study concerning ad hoc decision making of charge nurses and intensivists.

INTRODUCTION: Management of daily activities in ICUs is challenging. ICU shift leaders, charge nurses and intensivists have to make several immediate ad hoc decisions to enable the fluent flow of ICU activities. Even though the management of ICU activities is quite well delineated by international consensus guidelines, we know only a little about the content of the real clinical decision making of ICU shift leaders. METHODS: We conducted an observational study with the think-aloud technique to describe the ad hoc decision making of ICU shift leaders. The study was performed in two university-affiliated hospital ICUs. Twelve charge nurses and eight intensivists were recruited. Observations were recorded and transcribed for qualitative content analysis using the protocol analysis method. The software program NVivo 7 was used to manage the data. The interrater agreement was assessed with percentages and by Cohen's κ. RESULTS: We identified 463 ad hoc decisions made by the charge nurses and 444 made by the intensivists. During our data collection time, this breaks down to over 230 immediately made decisions per day (24 hours). We divided the ad hoc decision making of ICU shift leaders into two types: process-focused and situation-focused. Process-focused decision making included more permanent information, such as human resources, know-how and material resources, whereas situation-focused decision making included decisions about single events, such as patient admission. We named eight different categories for ICU ad hoc decision making: (1) adverse events, (2) diagnostics, (3) human resources and know-how, (4) material resources, (5) patient admission, (6) patient discharge, (7) patient information and vital signs and (8) special treatments. CONCLUSIONS: ICU shift leaders make a great number of complex ad hoc decisions throughout the day. Often this decision making involves both intensivists and charge nurses. It forms a bundle that requires versatile, immediate information for a successful outcome. In the future, we need to investigate which information is crucial for ad hoc decision making. These challenges should also be emphasised when information technology programs for ICU care management are developed.

Critical incidents and important information in the care processes of patients with cardiac symptoms.

AIM: To describe important information in the care processes of patients with cardiac symptoms. BACKGROUND: Process-based work-flow models are increasingly being used in healthcare. At the same time, developments in information systems offer the possibility of supporting improvements in process and information management in healthcare. To better utilize these possibilities we need to understand more about important information content and flow during treatment processes. METHOD: A qualitative approach involving the critical incident technique was used. Critical incidents were collected using a semi-structured questionnaire (50 respondents) and interviews (n=10). RESULTS: Three incident categories of important information were identified: (1) process-related incidents, (2) managerial incidents and (3) clinical incidents. Process-related incidents focused on agreed-care practices and the importance of the care environment. Managerial incidents focused on human and material resources. Clinical incidents focused on medical and nursing care and the importance of patient education. CONCLUSIONS: Information content, information flow and the timing of such information should be modelled further in order to improve the management of care processes. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Increasing knowledge about essential points of information as part of nursing management is important.

Think-aloud technique and protocol analysis in clinical decision-making research.

In this article, we aim to describe the practical aspects of research actions that should be taken into account when two methods--the think-aloud technique for data collection and protocol analysis as an analysis technique--are combined with research of decision making in acute clinical settings. These methods are rarely used together or written about in health care research. In addition, careful consideration of the pros and cons of study sampling, data collection, data management, and analysis techniques or approaches is still lacking when these methods are used in health care research. We discuss the background of the think-aloud technique and protocol analysis and review previous studies that have used these methods. The examples in the article are based on our study, in which we investigated the decision making of critical care experts. We find that the combination of the think-aloud technique and protocol analysis is applicable when investigating complex and overlapping decision-making processes and rapid, ad hoc decisions made by critical care experts.