FEATURE
International Nurses Day (IND) is celebrated around the world on the 12th May, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale's birth. She is world-renowned for pioneering what we know today as professional nursing, but did you know her analytical approach to medical care was also revolutionary?
The Lady with the Lamp was also the lady who conducted pioneering work as a statistician, saving lives of soldiers during the Crimean war. Her data visualisation continues to be influential to this day and is the best example of the importance of data in driving innovation for positive health and care outcomes.
PROVIDING NECESSARY RESOURCES
Much like Nightingale, nurses across health and social care are facing constant and unsustainable pressures. Today, we are seeing chronic workforce shortages, ongoing industrial action over below-inflation pay rises, and overstretched and limited resources, which helps to explain why 44% of registered social care nurses leſt their role in the past 12 months.
If we take a look at Gallup’s Employee Engagement research, we can see that whether or not we have the right tools to do our job is one of the biggest predictors of workplace stress. The report says that “materials and equipment is not just a checklist of tools. It includes the tangible and intangible resources employees need to do their job”.
Digital plays a huge role in reducing stress and improving job satisfaction for social care nurses in several ways; from streamlining administrative tasks, facilitating communication and collaboration, providing access to resources, and improving the efficiency and accuracy of care delivery. Social care is certainly moving in the right direction when it comes to using innovative technology, but we still have a long way to go until we are utilising it to fully support our care workforce.
OUR NURSES. OUR FUTURE
The theme for this year’s International Nurses day, in May, was ‘Our Nurses. Our Future’. The global campaign sets out what’s needed for nursing in the future in order to address the global health challenges and improve global health for all.
Empowering our care workforce to utilise the technology that is available to them is undoubtedly part of that future, and if given the right tools and support, nurses could leverage digital tools to significantly improve care outcomes.
Nurses have a wide range of responsibilities beyond providing pastoral care. Collaborating with physicians, therapists, social workers, and other members of their teams to create effective care plans, remains a vital part of their role.
UTILISING THE DATA WE CREATE EVERY DAY
Every time a resident’s care plan is created, an intervention is recorded, or when we administer medications, we’re creating data. Put simply, data is information that has been translated into a form that is efficient for movement or processing… and care homes create lots of it.
Data can help to revolutionise the way we deliver care, providing huge benefits for our nurses and residents alike. Data scientists like to talk about structured and unstructured data. The latter is what you have in folders, box files and numerous uncoordinated spreadsheets. It’s hard to do much with this other than scan through it looking for clues when something
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has already gone wrong. What you really want is to stay ahead of events by making data accessible and manageable.
Take a resident that has a high Waterlow score; this would make them susceptible to pressure ulcers. If this risk factor is automatically incorporated into their care plan, they’ll be less likely to develop a pressure ulcer, less likely to get up in the night because they feel uncomfortable, less likely to accidentally fall when they get up, and less likely to need hospitalisation.
“44% of registered social care
nurses left their role in the past 12 months.”
THE VALUE OF SOLID DATA MANAGEMENT
The Digitising Social Care Records Programme aims for all CQC- registered adult social care providers to access a Digital Social Care Record (DSCR) that can interoperate with a Local Shared Care Record by 2024.
Very soon we’ll have a new CQC inspection framework. Ratings will rely more on the continuous monitoring of key data and feedback and less on physical inspections. Under the new ratings regime, care providers will have to submit regular performance data updates through an online portal.
Yet 48% of care homes are still using an entirely paper-based resident care record system, not to mention that moving to a new way of working can be challenging. So how can we empower and enable our valued care workforce to use digital to make the most of the data they collect on a daily basis, to drive long term positive outcomes for residents and for the care sector as a whole?
We need to support our care workforce every step of the way, wherever they are on their digital journey, and present to them the multiple benefits that data brings.
THE FRONT LINES OF CHANGE
In a recent speech, International Council of Nurses (ICN) President Dr Pamela Cipriano said: “Together our future depends on every nurse, every voice, to not only be on the front lines of care, but also be on the front lines of change.”
As a skilled data analyst, Florence Nightingale was certainly a gamechanger. She used data to make an unanswerable case for many of the health and hygiene procedures we now take for granted. In a people-focused organisation like a care home, data management might not seem like your number one priority. But data, and what you can do with it, can be your best friend if you want to improve care standards and create better, happier, more dignified care for residents in care homes.
To mark this International Nurses Day, we must champion how we can leverage data to not only help give residents the independence, choice and individuality they want, but to give the care workforce the skills, freedom and time they need to care.
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