Fairfield Hospital, NSW: Time Management in Nursing Practice

This essay delves into the critical issue of time management in nursing, particularly for graduate nurses transitioning to professional practice. Drawing from personal experiences at Fairfield Hospital, NSW, and supported by relevant literature, the essay explores the importance of reflective practice and the challenges new nurses face in managing their time effectively. It identifies key factors such as "knowing," planning, adaptation, and flexibility as crucial for developing time management skills. The essay also highlights barriers to effective time management, including lack of clear goals, distractions, and staffing shortages, while providing practical strategies such as prioritization, goal setting, and the use of planners and time audits. The conclusion emphasizes the need for nurses to develop strong time management skills to improve efficiency, reduce stress, and enhance patient care, ultimately aligning with the standards of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia.

Running head:TRANSITION TO PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE-NURSING
TRANSITION TO PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE-NURSING
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

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Time management in nursing
Introduction
Reflective practice in nursing is an essential curriculum in nursing. Reflective practice is
an essential factor for the development of a crucial, autonomous and advanced practitioners.
Reflecting on the daily experiences helps the nurses to enhance nursing care and have a better
understanding of the actions and the practices. Through reflective practice I would focus on the
issue of time management, that most of the graduate nurses’ face while in practice. This essay
would discuss about the possible strategies to overcome the challenges related to time
management. I did my placement in the aged care and the rehabilitation at the Fairfield hospital,
NSW, where I had faced subsequent difficulties regarding time management issues. The paper
would also provide examples from personal practices supported by authentic literary sources.
Personal experience and strategies for effective time management
The nurses have to work in an environment with his workload that necessitates efficient
leadership and the management skills (Kaya et al. 2015). One of the skills is the time
management behavior of the nurses. As per the experts, prevention of the wastage of time and
having control over the time can lead to improvement of the managerial abilities, reduction of
stresses , preservation of the human resources and ultimately leads to job satisfaction (Häfner,
Oberst & Stock 2014). According to a study done by Ebrahimi et al. (2014) the graduate nurses
on a neonatal unit, five main factors have been identified- Knowing, planning, fulfillment,
adaptation and flexibility, which helps the nurses to manage their time more efficiently. As a

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graduate nurse I can relate to the several above factors and is aware that I need to work on these
five themes in order to adopt the time management skills.
“Knowing” is important for the nurses to manage time on this unit (Rush et al. 2015). It is
necessary for the graduate nurses to assess the patient carefully, otherwise more time would be
spent on the patients looking for the effective interventions (Liu et al. 2016). Knowing about the
condition of the patient would make the graduate nurses less anxious.
Secondly, proper planning is required, which involves chalking out the daily plans and
delegation of the important tasks. Planning the activities of the basis of the priorities helps to
manage time effectively. Again novice nurses should not hesitate to seek help from the peers. As
per the NMBA standards of nursing nurses should reflect upon their activities and obtain
feedback from their peers. Experienced seniors can help the graduate nurses to figure out the
time wasters and effectively manage time(Chernomas & Shapiro 2013).
Adaptation and flexibility in nursing is extremely important to inculcate the time
management skills. Nurses often have to encounter unpredictable and adverse events like
shortage of the resources or time. In that case nurses should not waste time and should work
promptly to figure out the alternative ways of care without feeling less stressed while managing
time on the unit (Chernomas& Shapiro 2013).
Barriers to effective time management
While transitioning from student nurse to a staff nurse, the graduate nurses faces
challenges and require time to adapt themselves to a new environment. This transition period
calls for experimentation and exploration of the challenges encountered by the freshly graduate
nurses (Rush et al. 2015). While encountering with the new challenges, the nurses often face

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difficulties to complete all the responsibilities within stipulated time. Ebrahimi et al. (2014) has
identified some of the barriers of effective time management in nursing. These are lack of clear
goals and direction, time stealers, the inability to say no, taking on too much time, distractions,
procrastination, negative attitude, poor health, poor infrastructure, lack of proper documentation
techniques, open door policy, shortage of staffing and social media (Cherry& Jacob 2016). I
have often noticed, in order to manage time, I often miss out some of the essential nursing
actions, such as missing one of the steps of the five moments of hand and hygiene while
disinfecting the patient or forgetting to take a verbal consent before touching the patient.
As stated by the nursing participants in a study conducted by Cherry& Jacob(2016),
shortage of staffing is one of the reason for excessive workload and ineffective time
management. Literary sources have proven that unorganized education, intensive educational
programs overlaps with the working shifts of the nurses. In a study by general time management
skills, it has been observed that the time management skills among the nurses have increased
after an educational program.
Strategies for effective time management
According to Said (2014) time management is all about the critical thinking and the way
the tasks are prioritized. Poor time management can be difficult especially for the nurse leaders
trying to handle the busy schedules including the staffing problems, meetings and other health
care issues occurring throughout the workday (Freeling& Parker 2015). Poor time management
results in inefficient work workflow, leading ton wastage of time and decreased satisfaction at
work. While working as a nursing student, I have understood the prioritizing is an effective for
managing time. We have often have to divide our tasks and finish them from the highest priority
to the lowest one. For example, while starting of a shift, it is the duty of the nurse to understand

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the urgency of the patient. After an assessment has been done, the patients can be notified that
they will be attended shortly, while the nurses can take care of the urgent patients. In my practice
I have often faced the “squeaky wheel” situation, where the patient who gathered the attention of
the nurses might not be the one with urgent need. Hence, the nurses should understand these
priority setting traps. Nurses have to work in multidisciplinary sectors, starting from advanced
care unit to neonatal unit where nurses have to be responsible for giving the lifesaving medicines
as well as taking care of the hygiene and the nutrition of the patient, hence it is necessary to
prioritize the tasks that has to be accomplished first (Said 2014).
The effective building blocks for an effective time management are-
 The identification of the goals
 Reviewing the utilization of the time
 Matching the utilization of the time patterns with the goals
 Prioritizing the tasks
 Tasks that should be prioritized are- Important and the urgent tasks, Important but not the
urgent tasks, Not important and not urgent tasks (Häfner, Oberst & Stock. 2014).
It is necessary to maintain a planner handy for scheduling the activities. The daily task should
be divided in to blocks of time starting from an interval of 15 minutes. The time should be
blocked on the calendar for the recurring events including the preparation for the fields travel
time, with require documentation, team meetings, meals and coordinated telephone calls,
meals and workday review (Theisen & Sandau 2013). For example during my placements, I
used a planner for arranging by daily tasks on the basis of their urgency. It is necessary to be
realistic while planning the calendar. A system for the checking off the activities as we

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complete them and carrying over the incomplete activities to a later date is required (Cherry
& Jacob 2016). Windsor, Douglas and Harvey (2012) have stated that a time audit can be
useful in improving the time management skills. It does not reveal the 2 hours chunks of the
wasted time but it definitely helps us to identify any small increments that can be managed in
a better way. As the tracking period is complete, the log for the opportunities shall be
reviewed for the opportunities to make any improvements. This will also help in the
identification of the interruptions or the inefficient tasks, the personal use of the social media
and more. While working on a big project, taking breaks for checking the messages for the
social media can be tempting but summation of the small gaps might lead to chunks of
mismanaged time and might distract a person from the completion of the projects (Freeling &
Parker 2015). During my placements, I have invested enough timing in internet surfing as I
had to conduct an evidence based search. These distractors can be confronted by setting
limits for using the social networking for personal use. Busy work might creep in the
weekend and might hamper the personal life. Many of the nurse leaders have to use the
weekend for catching up to the work. And hence I believe that proper time management
would help me to save some time for myself. Procrastination is a great thief of time. It gives
signals to the internal conflicts and the indecision and the generally results in avoidance of
the difficult tasks (Häfner, Oberst & Stock 2014). It is necessary that we identify out high
energy periods during the working hours and schedule the most difficult visits during these
periods. Nurses should define their own deadlines for developing a time frame in which to
plan and fit the tasks in to our own schedule. As stated by Van Eerde (2015) perfectionism in
clinical skills can be paralyzing and is usually a common trait among the novice nurses.
Reasonable standards of practice should be adopted by avoiding perfectionism. While in my

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professional practice, I have realized that we need not need to be perfect but are entitled to do
the needful that is important for the patient. While in my placement, I have come across
certain online resources that have equipped me with strategies for effective time management
and to maintain evidence based practice of care. It is also necessary for the nurses to strive
for excellence by effectively managing time using the resources provided by the
organization. I believe that I will be able to achieve this by following the clinical competency
standard of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia’s (NMBA) standards of practice.
Being aware of the timings required in each medical procedure such as the timing between
injection applications, managing time for both administrative and medical tasks would
certainly help me in my future professional practice. However, I intend to expand my
knowledge skills for ensuring a safe care for the patients and in doing so, I would also fulfill
the duty of a registered nurse.
Conclusion
With regards to my personal experience and evidence based researches, it can be
concluded that time management is an essential skill that needs to be developed by the nurses.
The barriers to time management has found to be shortage of staffs, lack of proper training,
excess work load, stress, unorganized educational planning and unnecessary use of internet
surfing. Knowing, realistic planning, setting the priorities, proper documentation, identifying the
time wasters, refrainment from the use of social networking without any valid reason has been
identified to be the probable strategies for managing time effectively in a clinical setting.

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References
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Cherry, B. & Jacob, S.R., 2016. Contemporary nursing: Issues, trends, & management. Elsevier
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