Nursing Informatics

Practicum Journal Entry (Nursing Informatics)
Nurse scheduling can be defined as making a determination as to when a member of a hospital’s nursing staff is supposed to be on duty as well as determining the shift each of the nurses should work (Rowland, 1997). Scheduling is supposed to take into consideration the Nurse’s preferences, length of shift each nurse is supposed to work each day, weekend assignments, and unhealthy patterns in the shifts (Jeffery, Borum & Englebright, 2017). Jeffery, Borum and Englebright (2017) found that In order to review the healthiness of the schedule the unhealthy schedule practice will be converted into metrics. These metrics will be translated into dashboards for comparison over time and between different units.
During my practicum, I observed that nurse schedules were almost static and unchanging despite the fact that at some point the facility would have intermittent high patient traffic. I interacted with several nurse practitioners and to my surprise most of them were unhappy with their weekend duties and shifts. Although most of my acquaintances had no issues with their weekday shifts some of them were at times visibly fatigued probably because of taking frequent overtime responsibilities. Some nurses would have several patients to attend to at a go and this would jeopardize their ability to give undivided attention and care to each of the patients. Although the hospital facility had an apparent sufficient number of nurses there was a pronounced scheduling problem.
Aickelin and Dowsland (2004) researched on the NSP (Nurse scheduling Problem) and suggested optimal avenues of assigning shifts to nurses. The researchers suggested hard constraints with some considerable solutions which when followed would offer valid scheduling solutions. Cheang et al. (2003) stated that hospitals require repeated production of duty rosters for the nursing staff. Proper scheduling will positively impact quality of care, nurse recruitment, and development of sound budgets among other things. As Jeffery, Borum and Englebright (2017) would have it fatigue is a common factor in nurse scheduling. Long shifts and uncontrolled overtime hours can be linked directly to undesirable health outcomes and more patient errors (Jeffery, Borum & Englebright, 2017). Employee preferences and sound policies that ensure that the schedule is not favorable to some nurses and unfavorable to others are important. With participation and sound nursing policies fatigue and discontentment among nurses will reduce and productivity will go up.
References
Aickelin, U., & Dowsland, K. A. (2004). An indirect genetic algorithm for a nurse-scheduling problem. Computers and Operations Research, 31(5), 761–778. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-0548(03)00034-0
Cheang, B., Li, H., Lim, A., & Rodrigues, B. (2003). Nurse Rostering problems - A bibliographic survey. European Journal of Operational Research. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0377-2217(03)00021-3
Jeffery, I. D., Borum, C., & Englebright, J. (2017). Healthy schedules, healthy nurses. American Nurse Today: Official Journal of Ana, American Nurses Association, 46-47. Vol. 12 No. 10. American nurse today: official journal of ANA. https://www.americannursetoday.com/healthy-schedules-healthy-nurses/
Rowland, H. S. (1997). Nursing administration handbook. Gaithersburg, Md: Aspen Publ.