Nursing work at clinical laboratories

The paper aims to show the features of the roles played by the nursing team in the sample collection service of a clinical laboratory by identifying the activities carried out by different agents and their insertion in the organizational structure. The theoretical reference framework is based on studies about the work process and human resources in health and nursing. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire, which was applied to a sample of 45 institutions. Data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results show that 77.8% of the laboratories under analysis have nursing auxiliaries, 13% practical nurses and 33.3% nurses. Work division is observed: nurses are mainly in charge of managerial tasks, whereas nursing auxiliaries and nursing technicians are responsible for performing technical assistance activities, with no distinction between the latter's roles. There are other health professionals carrying out the same activities, and nursing is subordinated to other activity areas in 24 (53.3%) laboratories. This study highlights the lack of specificity of nursing actions and their lack of autonomy in the study environment.     

Classic or new monopsony? Searching for evidence in nursing labor markets

The market for registered nurses (RNs) is often offered as an example of "classic" monopsony, while a "new" monopsony literature emphasizes that firm labor supply is upward sloping independent of market structure. Using data from multiple sources, we explore the relationship between nursing wages in hospitals and measures of classic and new monopsony. Wage level analysis fails to provide support for classic monopsony, the relative wages of RNs in 240 U.S. labor markets being largely uncorrelated with hospital system concentration. Longitudinal analysis shows nursing wages declining with increases in hospital concentration. We interpret these results as providing support for classic monopsony effects in the short run, but question whether wage effects are sustained in the long run. No relationship is found between nursing wages and a new monopsony measure of mobility, but support for new monopsony is found for women elsewhere in the labor market. RNs display greater inter-employer mobility than do women (or men) in general. Two conclusions follow. First, upward sloping labor supply need not imply monopsonistic outcomes. Second, absent more compelling evidence, nursing should not be held up as a prototypical example of monopsony-classic or new.     

Strengthening hospital nursing

Hospitals, nurses, the media, Congress, and the private sector are increasingly concerned about shortages of registered nurses (RNs) and the impact on safety and quality of patient care. Findings from a growing number of studies provide evidence of a relationship between hospital nurse staffing and adverse outcomes experienced by medical and surgical patients. These findings have policy implications for strengthening the nursing profession, monitoring the quality of hospital care associated with nursing, and improving the relationship between hospitals and the nursing profession.     

Sickness absence and the organization of nursing care among hospital nurses

OBJECTIVES: Primary nursing and team nursing are two different ways of organizing nurses' work in hospital wards. This study examined whether primary nursing is associated with lower sickness absence rates than team nursing is. METHODS: Altogether 1213 nurses from 13 primary nursing wards and 13 team nursing wards participated in a 3-year observational study. The nurses' sickness absence records were linked with information on the organization of nursing in the wards. RESULTS: After adjustment for demographic and ward characteristics, primary nursing, compared with team nursing, was associated with 26-42% higher annual rates of short (1-3 days) spells of sickness absence (P<0.05). The corresponding adjusted excess rates varied between 26% and 36% for the long (>3 days) absences, depending on the year (P<0.05). Among the primary and team nurses who had no sickness absence in the first year, primary nursing was associated with a 41% higher incidence of short-term sickness absence in the second year and a 56% higher incidence in the third year. CONCLUSIONS: The expected benefits of primary nursing for nurses' health are not supported by data on recorded sickness absences. Recommendations to implement primary nursing in team nursing wards cannot be justified simply on the basis of potentially favorable effects on employee health.     

Nursing auxiliaries and nursing technicians: different professional categories and equivalent jobs

This is a qualitative study with the purpose of identifying and analyzing the differences between the work developed by nursing auxiliaries and nursing technicians. It relies on the theoretical framework concerning health care and nursing work and the Theory of Communicative Action. Information was collected by means of interviews in three hospitals and involved nursing auxiliaries, nursing technicians, nurses and physicians, totaling 32 statements. Results showed that auxiliaries and technicians perform a wide range of actions, including those which are usual for such categories, patient evaluation activities and complex procedures. All the statements indicated that there was no difference between the work done by nursing auxiliaries and that performed by nursing technicians, which allows for questioning the appropriateness of such work division.     

The paradoxical impact of health care restructuring in Canada on nursing as a profession.

This article draws on the concept of "countervailing powers" to explore some of the contradictory effects of Canadian health care restructuring on nursing. The main focus is on key institutional powers in the nursing field, the major individual and collective strategies nurses have adopted in response to restructuring, and the ways in which the interaction between global and national market forces and the aggregate responses of nurses has created a severe shortage of nurses. The global shortage has led to a global competition for nurses' labor. This, along with government budget surpluses, has increased nurses' bargaining power, forcing governments and hospital managers to reverse nursing spending cuts; to offer more secure professional jobs, as opposed to casual work; to engage in aggressive, bonuses-laden recruitment of nurses, both within Canada and abroad; and, more generally, to rethink some of their restructuring strategies. However, since the bargaining power of nurses is largely market dependent and, as such, highly variable, there does not seem to be much potential for a sustained increase in the institutionalized power of the nursing profession.     

Differentiated practice and specialization in community nursing: a descriptive study in the Netherlands

Nursing roles are described with respect to two principles on the basis of an inventory study carried out in the Netherlands: differentiated practice and specialization. A total of 58 agencies for community nursing participated in this study (response = 84%). In each of these agencies an expert was asked to answer questions by telephone. The results show that a distinction is made between two levels of nurses working in the community: community nurses and community nurse auxiliaries. This distinction is based on the complexity of care, the range of responsibilities and a division between curative and preventive care (adult care vs. mother and child care). Assessment and diagnosis is reserved for nurses at the first level. Second level nurses are responsible for the other components of the nursing process. This study also showed that first level nurses regularly perform tasks that do not require a first level of expertise. It has become obvious with regard to specialization that the generalist work for first level nurses is diminishing: they have to choose either (curative) adult care or (preventive) mother and child care. First and second level nurses also have the opportunity of specializing in one or more patient categories. The aim of these “areas of special expertise” is to improve professionalism and patient care in community nursing. Based on the results of this study the use of measures to guarantee that the mix of staff meets the demand of care is recommended. In line with this, special measures have to be taken to upgrade the tasks of community nurses. In this respect the use of areas of special expertise and activities relating to coordination of care seem to be appropriate measures.     

Academia and the social division of nursing work in the Government sector: sinking or surpassing?

This paper is based on the assumption that the widening gap between manual labor and intellectual tasks tends to weaken the inherent potential of the labor force. Its purpose is to analyze current trends in the division of labor in the Brazilian nursing sector. This is exemplified by the findings of recent surveys conducted by graduate students who studied various aspects of the work processes involved in healthcare, education and research through a qualitative meta-analysis. The non-appropriation of the object by the work process agents was common to all three studies: the graduate students plan an approach to the object that is altered by the advisor in compliance with research interests; reports on educational experiments conducted by nurses highlight the gap between planning and implementation of the activities, hampering full exploration of the purpose of educational efforts; community health agents perform tasks assigned by the nursing staff. Dealing with this alienation is an urgent task, through training and upgrading the subjects so that they have full mastery of the object, the purpose and the work tools, able to share their expertise and work closely together with a critical approach in order to transform the epidemiological profiles of the various social classes.     

Permanent education: a tool to think and act in nursing work

This research is important to the extent that it contributes to reflections on educational actions directed at nursing workers, focusing on the purpose, instruments and subjects responsible for care. The general aim was to analyze the effects of permanent education actions on nursing care quality at a large private hospital in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. We carried out a qualitative study in the framework of dialectics. Data were collected from two nurses and seventeen nursing auxiliaries and technicians who worked on the eighth and ninth floor and from the nurse manager. The results showed that education is not articulated with the work process and that professionals need management improvement, permitting teaching through problem-raising. The role of nursing professionals needs to be reviewed in the context of the work process, together with training based on the permanent education strategy.     

Nurses' professionalism in Canada: a labor process analysis.

This article draws on a body of research conducted by the author over the past ten years on the social organization of nursing work. It explores questions surrounding nurses' contemporary labor process control and its meaning for nurses' professionalization and proletarianization. Both are dynamic processes, changing as public administration of the Canadian health care system changes and as nurses are successful in winning more complete self-regulation. Nurses are currently being articulated more and more securely to dominant ideas of public sector management through textually mediated technologies. Nurses find new upwardly mobile careers and challenging, responsible, and more respected work. However, as the generation of objective information for professional accountability, cost-accounting, and managerial decision-making becomes unified in computerized patient information systems, producing and using such information becomes a central and determining core of everyday nursing work. It organizes nurses into a "managed" practice of patient care, contradictory for them in many ways. Outstanding among these contradictions is a new professionalized standpoint of cost-efficiency that subordinates nurses' traditional interests and grounding of their work in the standpoint of care.     

The nursing work process: the gap between planning and care delivery

This article aims at characterizing nurse's and nursing assistant's work process, as well as at analyzing contradictions present in nursing work. Studies on the nursing and health work process, and the communicative action theory were used as its theoretical framework. Based on qualitative research methodology, the empirical material was collected by means of semi-structured interviews with nurses, nursing assistants and physicians on the same work team in a school hospital. Analysis was conducted through the impregnation technique and the identification of thematic units, which were interpreted on basis of analytical categories from the theoretical framework. Results showed contradictions such as the separation between planning and care delivery and the absence of appropriation of nursing knowledge by the agents who are in charge of delivering care.     

糖尿病护理团队合作思路在护理风险管理中的作用

目的探讨糖尿病护理团队合作思路在护理风险管理中的作用。方法回顾性分析我院开展护理风险管理前收治的糖尿病患者468例,记为对照组,选取开展护理风险管理后我院收治的糖尿病患者512例,记为干预组。对照组患者均进行常规护理操作,干预组患者针对其具体情况成立糖尿病护理风险管理合作团队,明确团队中各小组的职责及任务,合作探讨出个性化、全面、具体的护理及治疗方案,训练护理人员的风险防范意识。比较两组患者的护理安全事故发生率及护理满意度。结果干预组患者护理安全事故发生率明显低于对照组(P0.05);干预组患者的护理满意度明显高于对照组(P0.05)。结论糖尿病护理团队合作思路的实施,不仅增强了护理人员的工作责任感,深化了互相协作的重要性,提升了优质护理服务的内涵,而且提高了护患双方的安全意识,改善了护患关系,提高了护理工作满意度,有利于护患双方共同合作提高治疗效果。     

以工时为核心的护士绩效考核实践

以护理工时为基础,建立以工时核算为核心的老年科护士绩效考核方案,并与医院信息系统相关联。改革后,护士工作效率提高,护理质量提升,护士满意度增加。认为工时绩效考核方案具有一定科学性和合理性,能够充分体现护理人员劳动价值,促进团队协作,提升护理质量。     

Work-related injury among direct care occupations in British Columbia, Canada

Objectives

To examine how injury rates and injury types differ across direct care occupations in relation to the healthcare settings in British Columbia, Canada.

Methods

Data were derived from a standardised operational database in three BC health regions. Injury rates were defined as the number of injuries per 100 full‐time equivalent (FTE) positions. Poisson regression, with Generalised Estimating Equations, was used to determine injury risks associated with direct care occupations (registered nurses [RNs], licensed practical nurses [LPNs) and care aides [CAs]) by healthcare setting (acute care, nursing homes and community care).

Results

CAs had higher injury rates in every setting, with the highest rate in nursing homes (37.0 injuries per 100 FTE). LPNs had higher injury rates (30.0) within acute care than within nursing homes. Few LPNs worked in community care. For RNs, the highest injury rates (21.9) occurred in acute care, but their highest (13.0) musculoskeletal injury (MSI) rate occurred in nursing homes. MSIs comprised the largest proportion of total injuries in all occupations. In both acute care and nursing homes, CAs had twice the MSI risk of RNs. Across all settings, puncture injuries were more predominant for RNs (21.3% of their total injuries) compared with LPNs (14.4%) and CAs (3.7%). Skin, eye and respiratory irritation injuries comprised a larger proportion of total injuries for RNs (11.1%) than for LPNs (7.2%) and CAs (5.1%).

Conclusions

Direct care occupations have different risks of occupational injuries based on the particular tasks and roles they fulfil within each healthcare setting. CAs are the most vulnerable for sustaining MSIs since their job mostly entails transferring and repositioning tasks during patient/resident/client care. Strategies should focus on prevention of MSIs for all occupations as well as target puncture and irritation injuries for RNs and LPNs.Direct care occupations comprise the largest proportion (58%) of healthcare employees in Canada and consist of registered nurses (RNs), licensed practical nurses (LPNs) and care aides (CAs).^1,2,3 Engkvist et al. (1998) describe a similar grouping of nursing occupations in Sweden with general RNs, state registered nurses (LPNs) and auxiliary nurses (CAs).⁴ Such employees work in various settings (acute care, nursing homes and community care) across the healthcare system. These settings, providing care specific to the needs of patients/residents/clients, have very differing task requirements. Due to shortages in the direct care occupations, workers have more opportunities to choose where they prefer to work. While wage differentials may influence recruitment and retention, as Spetz (2003) has noted, wage increases are not viable solutions for resolving the workforce shortages; work conditions were more important for recruiting and retaining personnel.⁵ Thus a study of differential risk of injuries for the various direct care occupations in different health settings is warranted.RNs can work as independent practitioners in all settings or as team members that assign clients and/or client care functions appropriately. LPNs do not work in isolation but as team members and must exercise clinical judgment in accepting assigned client care functions within their own level of competence.⁶ In many nursing homes, LPNs have been used interchangeably with CAs. CAs must work with the support of RNs and LPNs in providing help to patients/residents/clients with their activities of daily living (such as assistance with personal hygiene, dressing, eating and mobility). This often involves lifting, transferring and repositioning of patients/residents/clients.In the health sector across Canada in 2004, 62.5% of RNs were working in acute care, whereas 13.4% were working in community health and 10.5% in nursing homes.⁷ Jansen et al. (2000) reports that LPNs were predominantly (57%) in acute care, 33% in nursing homes and 10% in community care.⁸ CAs were predominantly working in nursing homes with some in community care and a smaller proportion in acute care.⁹ In the future, it is likely that more nurses will be required to work in nursing homes or community care because of policy changes that focus on reducing the number of chronic care residents in acute care settings, and an ageing population who will need ongoing care whether in their home, assisted living or nursing homes. RNs and LPNs may choose not to work in these settings if they perceive these work environments have higher injury risks than acute care.Changes in the nature of care provided to patients/residents/clients and shifts in work patterns have a great impact on the nursing profession.¹⁰ Because of the different tasks and roles for the three nursing occupations within different care settings, each nursing occupation may have different injury experiences.^8,11,12 Identifying these different patterns of injury through subgroup analysis by care types may allow for more effective targeting of prevention efforts, as well as help nursing staff make informed decisions. The aim of the present study was to examine how injury characteristics and incidence among the three nursing occupations differ in relation to acute care, nursing homes and community care settings in British Columbia (BC), Canada. Time‐at‐risk data can provide more accurate injury rates than general rates published by Workers'' Compensation Boards in Canada and the USA.     

Nurses wanted: Is the job too harsh or is the wage too low?

When entering the job market, nurses choose among different kind of jobs. Each of these jobs is characterized by wage, sector (primary care or hospital) and shift (daytime work or shift). This paper estimates a multi-sector-job-type random utility model of labor supply on data for Norwegian registered nurses (RNs) in 2000. The empirical model implies that labor supply is rather inelastic; 10% increase in the wage rates for all nurses is estimated to yield 3.3% increase in overall labor supply. This modest response shadows for much stronger inter-job-type responses. Our approach differs from previous studies in two ways: First, to our knowledge, it is the first time that a model of labor supply for nurses is estimated taking explicitly into account the choices that RN's have regarding work place and type of job. Second, it differs from previous studies with respect to the measurement of the compensations for different types of work. So far, it has been focused on wage differentials. But there are more attributes of a job than the wage. Based on the estimated random utility model we therefore calculate the expected value of compensation that makes a utility maximizing agent indifferent between types of jobs, here between shift work and daytime work. It turns out that Norwegian nurses working shifts may be willing to work shift relative to daytime work for a lower wage than the current one.     

Pay for performance in hospitals: implications for nurses and nursing care

As pay-for-performance programs gain momentum, hospital administrators and clinical leaders will need to consider the organization's infrastructure and measures that promote quality management initiatives. Many hospital performance measures by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services involve chronic diseases that may be best managed by an interdisciplinary team-based approach, of which nurses are significant members. While the primary focus of pay-for-performance has been concentrated on physicians, comparatively less attention has been given to the potential impact on nurses and nursing care. Moreover, the impact of the pay-for-performance measures on nursing labor and processes has not been well studied. Within acute care settings, increasing attention has focused on the structure of nursing, such as number and skill mix of nursing personnel, processes of care, and influence on patient outcomes. As pay-for-performance standards evolve and encompass patient outcomes, attention to nursing's contribution will follow. Nursing leadership will need to address a number of strategies to (a) address the impact of pay-for-performance on nursing performance measures as well as (b) on staff nurses' ability to contribute to the organization's efforts in achieving pay-for-performance standards, including education, documentation, team collaboration, and patterns of care.