All around the world we’ve been applauding our healthcare and aged care workers for being on
the front line in our battle against Covid. Straining under overwhelming case numbers and with their own staff being locked down, hospitals and aged care facilities are struggling to provide the
care that’s needed. Here on the East Coast of Australia, we are told that the pressure on our own system will worsen before it improves. There’s a backlog of surgery, an ageing population and the uncertainty of how the end-game of the Covid pandemic will play out as restrictions ease and we embark on our various designated "road maps".
So it's not rocket science to work out that every hour of a nurse or aged care worker's time that’s wasted instead of spent providing care is an hour of added stress placed on them and the system, ....and an hour less of positive outcomes for patients. Ask any Healthcare Worker what his or her biggest waste of time is and the chances are that searching for the equipment that they require to perform a task (see below) is right at the top of the list. (Along with paperwork!)
Never before has the need to address this problem been more relevant.
A problem hiding in plain sight
It’s one of those ‘problems hiding in plain sight’. We’ve become used to spending time
searching for stuff, even though it’s a monumental waste of time - we do it around our
homes, gardens and offices and so it’s our modus operandi. We just accept the inefficiency.
With the increasing pressures on staff, solving this problem so that we can give time back to
carers to do more actual caring, is becoming a pressing challenge that operations managers
and GMs need to address urgently if they haven’t already (and if you haven’t, you’re far from
alone). So, how do you start?
Train a spotlight at the problem
The problem exists within your organisation! Your nurses, carers, environmental services teams, maintenance crews and other users of patient critical equipment have told us so! The first thing is to acknowledge and appreciate the problem within your domain. Time wastage needs to be addressed.... head on.....no more looking past it and simply accepting that it’s just part of life in a hospital or facility.
A good way to do this is to calculate the average amount of time wasted searching for
equipment per nurse, or other staff member, per shift (hint - a UK study by the Nursing Times
found it was around 20 min per nurse per shift!). Then multiply that out across your organisation. The results will shock you.
Then look for light, easily achieved improvements.
The solution, clearly, is to know where equipment is when you need it. It may surprise you to
learn that this doesn’t have to be a huge, expensive program - although most solutions to
date have been IT-heavy, big projects with onerous direct and associated costs. At Pinpointer, we can show you how, by using low-cost, simple-to-install trackers that don't even need an IT expert to set up. You can start solving this problem almost immediately.
Take a first step
The problem is on us now. It’s happening on your watch and there are quick and simple steps you can take to prove to yourself that you can solve it very quickly.
If you really want to make a start, Pinpointer is the solution. www.pinpointer.io
The article above is attributed to Spotto, preferred partner of Pinpointer.
