News
£50m to improve efficiency on wards
8 May 2008
The Government has announced a £50m investment in a project to
improve the management of wards in NHS trusts. In trials it was found
that nurses could double the amount of time they spend on direct patient
care and slash unnecessary paperwork.
The Productive Ward programme, designed by the NHS Institute for
Innovation and Improvement, empowers nurses to look at how their ward is
organised and make changes that allow them to spend more time with
patients. Often these are very simple ideas, such as altering patient
handover time, reorganising storage facilities and making better use of
data.
The programme has been piloted in four trusts and there are 10
learning partners, one in each Strategic Health Authority (SHA). A
further two trusts are rolling the programme out across all of their
wards. Evidence from the pilot sites shows the Productive Ward can:
- double the amount of time nurses spend on patient care;
- cut handover time by a third;
- reduce medicine round time by 63 per cent;
- cut meal wastage rates from 7% to 1%.
Around 80% of NHS trusts have already signed up to the Productive
Ward programme. However, only two trusts are rolling it out across all
their wards.
Alan Johnson said: "When I visited Nottingham City Hospital last
year, I was deeply impressed by their Productive Ward Pilot. By taking
small but significant steps, nurses have freed up time to make enormous
improvements to patient care.
"The programme works because nurses have total ownership. The power
is in their hands to make changes. I want to work with the RCN and ward
sisters to encourage more trusts to put the principles of the Productive
Ward programme into action across all their wards, increasing the time
nurses spend with patients and enabling them to do the job they were
trained for."
Dr Peter Carter, Chief Executive & General Secretary of the Royal
College of Nursing, said: "More than anything, nurses wish to provide
high quality care. The RCN is very pleased to say that the national
rollout of the Productive Ward programme will help to do just that.
Frontline staff work on wards, day in day out and are best placed to
devise and implement the changes that will allow them to spend more time
at the bedside caring for patients. The RCN would welcome further
government moves to ensure that future changes to the delivery of
healthcare are locally-led and clinically driven."
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