Introduction
Constantly striving to use every minute productively with a large number of cases and a high workload is not an easy task. It is especially common for workers in medical facilities, where even a slight delay can cost a person’s life. Nurses’ daily routine includes dispensing medications to patients, responding to emergency calls, performing medical manipulations, scheduling, and many other tasks (Yen et al., 2018). The lack of a competent approach to time management negatively affects all aspects of nurses’ work (Habib et al., 2018). It impedes their professional growth, prevents them from gaining experience, slows down their promotion, and undermines their authority, ultimately reducing their job satisfaction. As a consequence, there is a need for effective time management in a nurse’s work.
Expected Outcomes
Nowadays, nurses serve an ever-increasing number of patients and perform a lot of organizational work. These staff members fill out an enormous amount of administrative papers and carry out the orders of senior medical management. As a result, nurses increasingly report serious problems in managing time demands. To maintain a work-life balance, each of them needs to learn how to improve efficiency within the limited resource of available time (Matsuo et al., 2021). A time management system should improve professional satisfaction and reduce stress levels (Habib et al., 2018). This initiative will also help achieve a better work-life balance and give long-term growth and success a new impetus.
Data Collection Tools
Four main methods are used to collect data, each with two main varieties. These include surveys (questionnaires and interviews), document analysis (qualitative and quantitative), observation, and experimentation. Document analysis is unlikely to provide information on how emotionally strenuous nurses are now performing their tasks, so this method should be excluded. Observation would require the involvement of outside specialists, which can be resource-intensive. In a situation where nurses already fail at performing many small and large tasks, it would be risky to experiment on such employees. Especially since it would not reveal what their condition is and what tasks are most difficult for them to cope with. Therefore, surveys are needed to find out the key fears, worries, and difficulties of employees.
A Statistical Test for the Project
In order to make sure that the method used to facilitate the nurses’ work is really useful, it will be necessary to conduct a survey among the staff. This survey will contain questions that will make it easy to ascertain whether the staff is stressed and how the initiative has helped them. The results could be reported by email, whew effective techniques for reducing time spent on routine tasks will be listed. Such tests should be conducted regularly to avoid the initiative becoming unhelpful.
Strategies to Be Taken if the Results Are Not Positive
It is well known that healthcare workers often suffer from depression and professional burnout. The stress that arises as a result of such overexertion affects the personal life of the professional, further increasing the risk of nervous disorders. Time management principles involve the proper prioritization of a nurse’s work to increase her efficiency and productivity (Goldsby et al., 2020). However, there are often situations when this strategy is not very effective. For example, time management techniques do not work if they are applied in part or if there is a constant increase in the volume of tasks. If it is not possible to reduce work stress among nurses, negotiation with superiors will be necessary. The employees should communicate the need to solve the problem by, for example, expanding the number of staff or outsourcing certain tasks. Pfizer, for example, is actively using the latter method to delegate routine tasks to colleagues in India.
Plans to Maintain a Proposed Solution
As noted above, regular questionnaires should be administered to employees to make sure that time management is still facilitating their work. In addition, it seems useful to hold training sessions and meetings with supervisors to discuss the initiative’s effectiveness. Reminders of the benefits of following the key principles of time management can be sent to nurses’ emails. It would also be effective to invite representatives from other clinics whose staff have been able to improve the quality of their health care services by following this method of time management. At this stage, if the initiative is successful, it may be possible to try to establish follow-up by engaging time-management specialists. They will be able to identify errors in, for example, how goals are set in a clinical setting and advise staff who are experiencing difficulties.
Conclusion
Creating routines to manage predictable responsibilities is an obvious solution, but many clinics have problems with this. Nurses seeking to improve their productivity should apply time management principles that increase efficiency and job satisfaction and reduce professional and personal stress. Although implementing and maintaining effective time management skills requires lifelong behavioral changes and discipline, nurses can start with one or two areas that can be improved today. Time management is a dynamic process that requires flexibility and patience. Implementing nurse workload management techniques can improve the quality of care and job satisfaction.
References
Goldsby, E., Goldsby, M., Neck, C. B., & Neck C. P. (2020). Under pressure: Time management, self-leadership, and the nurse manager. Administrative Sciences, 10(3), 1-18. Web.
Habib, A., Afzal, M.F., Hussain, M.S., Naseer, A., Habib, T., & Gilani, S.A. (2018). Factors effecting time management of professional nurses’ at public hospital, Lahore. International Journal of Social Sciences and Management, 5(3), 231-235.
Matsuo, M., Suzuki, E., Takayama, Y., Shibata, S., & Sato, K. (2021). Influence of striving for work–life balance and sense of coherence on intention to leave among nurses: A 6-month prospective survey. INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing, 58, 1-9. Web.
Yen, P. Y., Kellye, M., Lopetegui, M., Saha, A., Loversidge, J., Chipps, E. M., Gallagher-Ford, L., & Buck, J. (2018). Nurses’ time allocation and multitasking of mursing activities: A time motion study. AMIA Symposium, 2018, 1137–1146.