Workload Among Nurses: Interdisciplinary Team Approach

Paper Info
Page count 4
Word count 1029
Read time 4 min
Topic Health
Type Essay
Language 🇺🇸 US

Background

The nursing profession is associated with a high level of workload, which leads to various stressful situations and reduced healthcare efficiency. The demand for healthcare is increasing along with the need for nursing professionals. However, the growth in the number of nursing specialists is not proportional, meaning that nurses have to do much more work, which leads to their overload and related problems. This issue has to be addressed appropriately to solve it as soon as possible because otherwise, the indicators of healthcare quality and patient safety might significantly decrease. To solve the issue of the workload among nurses, the interdisciplinary plan is proposed to improve the current situation.

Why Use an Interdisciplinary Team?

First of all, it is essential to discuss why the interdisciplinary team approach has been chosen to solve the issues of nurses’ workload. First, the workload will be reduced due to the team members’ mutual efforts as they unravel the related work issues together. Second, general work efficiency will increase since the reduced workload is a direct way to improve healthcare quality. Third, the need of the team under discussion is explained by the complexity of nursing care which should be provided by interdisciplinary staff. Fourth, having such a team working on a problem allows for developing more convenient approaches and solutions. Finally, establishing a multidisciplinary team is an additional motivation for creating guidelines for nurses and support staff since such procedures are necessary to manage a new work structure.

The Relevance of Using an Interdisciplinary Team

Using an interdisciplinary team to solve the issue is relevant because this approach has some specific advantages that will help improve healthcare quality, patient safety, and the general conditions of nursing work. The first advantage is reduced completion time of the tasks that nurses are responsible for in their work. For an interdisciplinary team, these tasks are easier to divide, meaning that nurses can work more effectively and do their work faster. The second advantage is the more efficient problem solutions because of the broader availability of different ideas. When an interdisciplinary team works on an issue or a set of issues, there is a high chance they can come to the best available solutions fast. Finally, teamwork based on mutual support results in the general increase of healthcare quality. Nurses who are supported and assisted as they face various challenges of their work have more chances to overcome the difficulties easily and achieve success. Therefore, an interdisciplinary team approach for solving the issue of nurses’ workload can be highly efficient.

Interdisciplinary Plan Summary

This interdisciplinary plan aims to use the workforce of nurses from different departments and educational backgrounds to create a team that can complete nursing tasks efficiently and with a reduced workload. In addition, the objective of the interdisciplinary plan is the general improvement of healthcare, increasing patient safety and outcomes. The strategy of this plan implies the team collaboration of the clinical director, registered nurses, and support staff. The role of the clinical director is to provide nursing guidelines while proposing assistance to different areas. An experienced nurse will help distribute these guidelines, and all nurses and support staff will help each other understand them. In addition, the director is to review the workload status of other nurses by analyzing feedback from the team members and evaluating it to define the areas that would need a revision.

Implementation of the Plan

The implementation of the plan will require effective utilization of the organizational resources to reach the set goals. According to Perez-Francisco et al. (2020), efficiency is the pillar that guarantees the sustainability of healthcare systems, so the best use of the available resources is the primary part of any organization’s work. Then, it is crucial to give proper training to the workers, especially the members of the future interdisciplinary team, to increase their comprehension of what benefit lies in the working collaboration with other nurses. Finally, there will be a need to provide additional staff to help update nurses’ patient equity to the charge nurse or supervisor. The lack of sufficient staff can be an obstacle for checking the status of each nurse equity, meaning that providing additional staff may help solve the issue.

Resource Management

Implementing the plan described in the previous section will require effective and accurate resource management to make sure the resources are not wasted. The resource expenditure is justified by the immediate need to solve the nurses’ workload as it can directly affect the healthcare quality, as mentioned before. The adverse effects of the nurses’ workload might be associated with patients’ safety, health, and even lives, which is the most critical justification for the resource expenditure. Each cost associated with the interdisciplinary plan will be accurately calculated. Additionally, a specialist, namely the financial manager, will control the budget to ensure that resources will not be wasted.

Evaluation of Effectiveness

The first sign of success would be the collaboration among nurses established according to the initial plan. Then, that collaboration would decrease the nurses’ workload, which would positively affect the healthcare quality. If these results are achieved, the implementation of the interdisciplinary team approach can be considered successful.

The Criteria and Degree of Success

The following criteria will be used to measure the success of the project. First, the working conditions within the established collaboration will be analyzed. There should be no errors in the teamwork of the interdisciplinary group and no critical issues caused by the organization of such a group. Next, the amount of time and energy saved by the nurses will be explored to measure the workload reduction. For these purposes, the nurses’ feedback will be used with the additional assessment report from the clinical director. Finally, the number of increased positive patient outcomes will be calculated. The patient safety and outcomes in the previous period will be compared to the same indicators in the period of the interdisciplinary teamwork. The degree of success will be defined by summarizing the parameters for each criterion. The more positive patient outcomes will be increased, and nurses’ workload will be reduced while working in the comfortable conditions of the interdisciplinary team, the more successful the project will be.

References

Diehl, E., Rieger, S., Letzel, S., Schablon, A., Nienhaus, A., Escobar Pinzon, L. C., & Dietz, P. (2021). The relationship between workload and burnout among nurses: The buffering role of personal, social and organisational resources. PloS one, 16(1), 1-17.

Perez-Francisco, D. H., Duarte-Clíments, G., del Rosario-Melián, J. M., Gómez-Salgado, J., Romero-Martín, M., & Sánchez-Gómez, M. B. (2020). Influence of workload on primary care nurses’ health and burnout, patients’ safety, and quality of care: Integrative review. Healthcare, 8(1), 1-14.

Rantz, M. J., Popejoy, L., Vogelsmeier, A., Galambos, C., Alexander, G., Flesner, M., Murray, C., & Crecelius, C. (2018). Reducing avoidable hospitalizations and improving quality in nursing homes with APRNs and interdisciplinary support: lessons learned. Journal of nursing care quality, 33(1), 5-9.

Cite this paper

Reference

NerdyBro. (2022, September 11). Workload Among Nurses: Interdisciplinary Team Approach. Retrieved from https://nerdybro.com/workload-among-nurses-interdisciplinary-team-approach/

Reference

NerdyBro. (2022, September 11). Workload Among Nurses: Interdisciplinary Team Approach. https://nerdybro.com/workload-among-nurses-interdisciplinary-team-approach/

Work Cited

"Workload Among Nurses: Interdisciplinary Team Approach." NerdyBro, 11 Sept. 2022, nerdybro.com/workload-among-nurses-interdisciplinary-team-approach/.

References

NerdyBro. (2022) 'Workload Among Nurses: Interdisciplinary Team Approach'. 11 September.

References

NerdyBro. 2022. "Workload Among Nurses: Interdisciplinary Team Approach." September 11, 2022. https://nerdybro.com/workload-among-nurses-interdisciplinary-team-approach/.

1. NerdyBro. "Workload Among Nurses: Interdisciplinary Team Approach." September 11, 2022. https://nerdybro.com/workload-among-nurses-interdisciplinary-team-approach/.


Bibliography


NerdyBro. "Workload Among Nurses: Interdisciplinary Team Approach." September 11, 2022. https://nerdybro.com/workload-among-nurses-interdisciplinary-team-approach/.

References

NerdyBro. 2022. "Workload Among Nurses: Interdisciplinary Team Approach." September 11, 2022. https://nerdybro.com/workload-among-nurses-interdisciplinary-team-approach/.

1. NerdyBro. "Workload Among Nurses: Interdisciplinary Team Approach." September 11, 2022. https://nerdybro.com/workload-among-nurses-interdisciplinary-team-approach/.


Bibliography


NerdyBro. "Workload Among Nurses: Interdisciplinary Team Approach." September 11, 2022. https://nerdybro.com/workload-among-nurses-interdisciplinary-team-approach/.