Workforce issues
How tech could bring the joy back to nursing
Burnout, mental health struggles and a lack of work-life balance have been given as the main reasons for staff leaving the NHS. Sophie Evans, a former critical care nurse and now a clinical consultant for health communications specialist Ascom, discusses why it has never been more important for the NHS to bring back the joy to nursing, and how technology can play a major role.
Often, when we talk about the benefits of technology within healthcare, we focus on the patient – from how it can be used to improve patient outcomes, its ability to transform how and where care can be accessed, and its potential to deliver near real-time health insights. But very rarely do we discuss the ways in which technology can change how healthcare professionals not only work more efficiently, but also how they feel about their jobs. Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of technology has become pivotal for companies across most sectors – not just in creating new ways of working, but also in helping to enrich employee experience. Technology is increasingly being used by companies to attract and retain talent. By improving workflow and efficiencies, it enables workers to focus on the elements of their job for which they are highly skilled and where it can deliver the greatest job satisfaction. However, despite being one of the UK’s
largest employers, the NHS’ view of technology remains largely unchanged. Perhaps now is the time that it is revisited. I left the NHS in 2018. I was, and I still am,
incredibly proud of the seven years I spent as a nurse.
I didn’t leave because I fell out of love
of nursing. I left because I could feel that increasingly the parts of my job that I found most rewarding, that made the lack of sleep and the long hours all worthwhile, were being eroded to make way for more admin tasks. This took me away from delivering care to my patients to spend longer periods at a computer or filling in forms.
Taking back the time paperwork took from nurses By December 2023, the Health and Social Care Secretary wants 90% of NHS Trusts to have electronic patient records in place. Converting bulky paper records into secure digital form aims to save clinician time, freeing-up a believed 23,000 hours of nursing time each year.3 The Government wants technology, such as the NHS app, to become the digital ‘front door’ for patients to access care. Of course, this is great news for both patients and healthcare professionals, but digitisation needs to be felt at ward level too. While patients are being driven to access ‘digital first’ healthcare, staff within hospitals use a predominantly paper-based system riddled with arduous, repetitive administration.
The NHS at breaking point
Record numbers of highly trained healthcare professionals are leaving the NHS. During the third quarter of 2020, more than 27,000 medics left the NHS – that’s around 2% of the entire NHS England workforce. It’s also the highest figure since records began in 2011.1 Aside from leaving due to contracts coming to
an end, concern over work-life balance is one of the most common reasons given by those leaving the health service. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
A study by the University of Roehampton
showed that the number of NHS workers struggling with mental health issues quadrupled during the early part of the pandemic. Those operating in frontline care roles were identified as being most at risk. Thirty-one per cent of frontline workers reported symptoms of depression, compared with 25% of non-frontline staff. They were also found to be more than twice as likely to have severe post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.2
It’s all very well having an impressive outward- facing system, but it’s no use, if the ‘nuts and bolts’ aren’t as effective and efficient as they should be. Before I qualified as a nurse, I never imagined that 50% of my day, sometimes even more, would be taken away from being with patients to instead complete paperwork, but that’s the reality. Take for example the admissions process – on a general ward, a nurse would manage the admissions of four to six new patients each day on average. I was a nurse in Wales and the admission booklet we worked to included 32 pages – that’s 192 pages of paperwork before I’ve even tended to a patient. The lack of on-hand technology also means that patients are required to share information repeatedly to different NHS contacts, because they don’t always have the paperwork to hand – that’s frustrating for both patients and clinicians. Being able to record patient data on a mobile
device, while at a patient’s bedside, saves time, prevents records from being misplaced and makes it easier for information to be shared across a clinical team. We call this point-of-care data access. Bedside patient record keeping can help to
give nurses back some of the time paperwork has taken away. In my role as a critical care nurse, of course the main priority was to keep the patient alive, but beyond that, it’s also important that the patient feels cared for in other ways. Most nurses want to treat every patient as if
they were their own family member. Spending time to wash or brush a patient’s hair isn’t a clinical necessity, but it’s in those moments that nurses can find joy and job satisfaction. This is when I, and my colleagues, would feel able to truly provide the standard of care we went into nursing to deliver. Carrying out tasks that take you away from
care can make you feel like you haven’t done your best for patients and lead to compassion fatigue and burnout.
February 2023 I
www.clinicalservicesjournal.com 47
▲
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68
