Written by on Wednesday September 28th 2011 in Newsletter, What We're Doing

Nurses doing what they love, more of the time

While at work; no matter our occupation, we treasure the time when we get to do what we love. For nurses, that time would be when they’re able to care for their patients.

In the summer of 2010 four hospitals in Oregon joined the Releasing Time to Care (RT2C) collaborative; an innovative quality improvement program that is transforming the nursing world.  That’s quite a claim, we know-but hear us out. RT2C, led by a great team of nurses, helps increase the time spent with patients. Meaning nurses get to do more of what they love, more of the time.

This results in happier staff and, (yes it gets better) there has been an improvement of patient experience and safer and more reliable care.

I think it may be safe to say that Releasing Time to Care sounds great, but what exactly does it do? Well, RT2C frees up time for front line hospital nursing staff.

This means that hospitals have an increased percentage of direct care for patients; decreased number of patient falls; and increased transparency and accountability through visual displays of quality measures.

Releasing Time to Care is a transformational opportunity for nursing, and it opens up staff engagement pushing decision making to the bed side, allowing the expert to make the decision. Presented in a sequential, step-by-step format RT2C uses visual tools to track patient falls, pressure ulcers, hospital associated infections, staff injury, and other quality measures chosen by each unit team.

It helps teams not only identify interruptions, wasted steps and inefficient workflows, but eliminates them. Identifying inefficient workflows, sound familiar? Well, at SIMUL8 we love helping others to eliminate inefficiencies!

Can you see where we are going with this?  Yep, that’s right, Releasing Time to Care uses computer simulation to allow nurses to experiment, risk-free, with changes to current practice to test which solutions will bring about the greatest improvements. This gives a robust underpinning to justify any investment decision for change. With these tools teams are able to focus on staff satisfaction, patient satisfaction and accountability within their units. That’s not all; they are also able to achieve better health outcomes for patients at lower costs.

Check out our Productive Ward Sim video that is used as part of Releasing Time to Care.