A study on prioritization in nursing care in terms of patient and nurse related outcomes

Abstract

Prioritization in nursing care defined as nurses decision to assign precedence to various patient care activities has the potential for omission or delay of certain nursing tasks In this study prioritization in nursing care was examined for its existence pattern reasons and predictive ability to explain patient outcomes and nurses work satisfaction A convergent mixed method design was adopted for the study Data was obtained through observation and self report methods from 205 randomly chosen nurses involved in direct patient care in the medical surgical wards of four tertiary care hospitals situated in Chennai and Kolkata. Qualitative data was obtained through in depth interviews conducted for twelve nurses from the quantitative sample of nurses The result of the study revealed that the reported level of prioritization based on composite score was low However 79 point 2 percent of the participants reported frequently missing at least one activity Results also revealed that nurses gave high priority to clinical monitoring and documentation activities related to cure of patients and low priority to carative and unstructured activities like communication discharge teaching emotional care and oral hygiene Inadequacy in human resource and problems in communication were identified as underlying factors contributing to prioritization and explained 40 point 6 percent of its variance Nurses work satisfaction and reported level of prioritization were found to have a significant moderate negative correlation indicating that nurses missing fewer activities experience more work satisfaction Patient satisfaction with nursing care was assessed and found to be low in areas like communication discharge teaching and emotional care which were the similar to low priority activities reported by nurses Based on the findings of this mixed method research the investigator has developed and proposed a policy brief to address prioritization in nursing care newline