Sommer, D.; Kasbauer, J.; Jakob, D.; Schmidt, S.; Wahl, F. Investigating Transportation Needs in Clinical Nursing – Observational Task Assessment in Rural Clinics. Preprints2023, 2023101755. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.1755.v1
APA Style
Sommer, D., Kasbauer, J., Jakob, D., Schmidt, S., & Wahl, F. (2023). Investigating Transportation Needs in Clinical Nursing – Observational Task Assessment in Rural Clinics. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.1755.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Sommer, D., Sebastian Schmidt and Florian Wahl. 2023 "Investigating Transportation Needs in Clinical Nursing – Observational Task Assessment in Rural Clinics" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.1755.v1
Abstract
Transportation tasks in nursing are common and shorten the time for direct patient care in times of nursing shortage and an aging society. There is a lack of research on transportation needs, with most studies focusing on overall nursing task analysis without a deeper analysis of transportation tasks. In July and September 2023, we conducted weekly observations of nurses to assess clinical transportation needs. We aim to understand the economic impact and the methods nurses use for transportation tasks. We conducted a participant observation using a standardized app-based form over a seven-day observation period in two rural clinics. N=1,830 transports were made by nurses and examined by descriptive analysis. Non-medical supplies account for 27.05 % (n=495) of all transports, followed by medical supplies at 17.32 % (n=317), pharmacotherapy at 14.10 % (n=258) and other other categories like meals or drinks contributing 12.68 % (n=232). Most transports had a factual transport time of under a minute, with patient transport and lab samples displaying more variability. In total, 77.15 % of all transports were made by hand. Requirements to collect items or connect transports with patient care were included in 5 % of all transports. Our economic evaluation spotlighted meals as the most costly transport, with 9,596.16€ p.a. in the observed clinics. Budget-friendly robots would amortize over one year by transporting meals. We support understanding nurses’ transportation needs via further research on assistive robots to validate our findings and determine the feasibility of transport robots.
Keywords
assistive robots; clinic logistics; nursing task classification; nursing workload; intra-hospital transfers; time and motion studies; healthcare; Germany
Subject
Public Health and Healthcare, Nursing
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
