Considerable amount of research has been done to devise ways of assessing the workload and calculating the number and mix of nurses required for a definite load.
The nursing needs of the patients are directly related to the severity of his illness, and therefore, to the degree of patient dependence on nurses.
In the study carried out by the NIHFW in the medical and surgical wards of a general hospital, the result showed that the average time taken per patient in different shifts varied from 196 minutes to 10 minutes for different degrees of dependency.
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A common observation of everyone working in hospitals is that nurses spend a lot of their working time (Nursing hours per day NHPD) in non-nursing activities.
Another study conducted as NIHFW showed that only 56.7 per cent of all nurses’ activities were patient-centred, of which 31.3 per cent were in direct patient, care. Patient-centred activities accounted for 42.9 per cent in the morning, 41.6 per cent in the evening and 23.6 per cent in the night shifts.
Such studies help the nursing administrator to estimate the total number of nurses needed and the staffing plan for a ward according to the categorization of patients and degree of their dependence.
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Given the aggregates for all wards and departments, the number of total nurses required and the overall staffing plan must be worked out by the hospital administrator.
Wide variations have been found in nursing hours per day (NHPD) in otherwise comparable hospitals.
Evidence of poor scheduling is apparent in many hospitals they determine their staffing needs on the basis of number of beds rather than on type of the patients.
And, contrary to the belief that sophistication in instrumentation and more mechanisation will reduce dependence on nurses, it has long been established that there is a direct correlation between sophistication and NHPD; the higher the sophistication, the greater the number of nursing hours.