Proposal for Nursing Informatics Solution to Improve Patient Response Time

The proposal suggests the development of a portable device connected to the nurses' desk to improve response time to patient signals. Nurses are often too busy to notice signals immediately, which can lead to delayed response times and endanger patients. The proposed device would vibrate or produce a tone indicating the bed number, allowing nurses to respond more quickly. The proposal also highlights the issue of burnout among healthcare staff due to long shifts.

Healthcare
Student’s name:
Institutional:

Informatics Solution Proposal
During the past three weeks, I have an opportunity to visit the healthcare workplace. I realized
that most of the time when a patient call for help by sending a signal from the bed to the nurse’s
desk, the nurse may fail to see the signal immediately. Nurses are very busy while on duty. They
perform various duties and at times they are even forced to multitask some in order to handle
them all. This is even intense when a nurse has to care for many patients alone. Apart from
administering prescribed medication to the patients, nurses have to also document all the
procedures and concerns of each and every patient (Kearney, Grainger, Chubbs, & Downey,
2016). This takes a lot of time and the nurse may not even finish all that work alone despite
being fast. A nurse may be attending patients in a different room when a signal is sent to the
nurses’ desk. The nurse will therefore fail to see the signal at that moment.
Therefore, this issue is of great concern since the patient sending may be in danger. The patient
may be facing an emergency condition and by the time the nurse get to respond, it will be too
late (Stimpfel, Sloane, & Aiken, 2012). It was so sad that a patient had to die in one of the rooms
in the healthcare workplace that I visited due to choking while the nurse was replacing fluids in
another room. There were only two nurses in the ward as the rest had gone for lunch. The other
nurse was busy changing linen for other patients and hence did not noticed the signal too. Such
longer shifts also creates burnout among the health care staff (Wisetborisut, Angkurawaranon,
Jiraporncharoen, Uaphanthasath, & Wiwatanadate, 2014).
I would therefore like to request for a permission to propose a solution for this clinical issue. My
proposal is that nursing informatics should be applied and a portable device that is connected to
the receiver on the nurses’ desk be developed. This device should be portable such that the nurse

carries it wherever he/she goes while in the hospital settings. This device will therefore function
in such a way that when a signal is send to the nurses’ desk, it vibrates or produce a tone
indicating the bed number. This will solve the delay in response and also promote the nursing
practice.
References
Kearney, A., Grainger, P., Chubbs, K., & Downey, J. (2016). Survey of Managers Regarding
Nurses’ Performance of Nonnursing Duties. Journal of Nursing Administration, 46(7/8),
379-384.
Stimpfel, A. W., Sloane, D. M., & Aiken, L. H. (2012). The longer the shifts for hospital nurses,
the higher the levels of burnout and patient dissatisfaction. Health affairs, 31(11), 2501-
2509.
Wisetborisut, A., Angkurawaranon, C., Jiraporncharoen, W., Uaphanthasath, R., &
Wiwatanadate, P. (2014). Shift work and burnout among health care
workers. Occupational Medicine, 64(4), 279-286.