DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
News Release issued by The Government News Network on 8 May 2008
National rollout
of Productive Wards will slash unnecessary paperwork
Nurses could double the amount of time they spend on direct
patient care and slash unnecessary paperwork thanks to £50m
investment in a project to improve efficiency on wards, Health
Secretary Alan Johnson announced today.
The Productive Ward programme, designed by the NHS Institute for
Innovation and Improvement, empowers nurses to look at how their
ward is organised and make changes that allow them to spend more
time with patients. Often these are very simple ideas, such as
altering patient handover time, reorganising storage facilities
and making better use of data.
The programme has been piloted in four trusts and there are 10
learning partners, one in each SHA. A further two trusts are
rolling the programme out across all of their wards. Evidence from
the pilot sites shows the Productive Ward can:
- Double the amount of time nurses spend on patient care;
-
Cut handover time by a third;
- Reduce medicine round time by
63 per cent;
- Cut meal wastage rates from 7 per cent to 1 per cent.
Around 80 percent of Trusts have already signed up to the
Productive Ward programme. However, only two trusts are rolling it
out across all their wards.
Alan Johnson said:
"When I visited Nottingham City Hospital last year, I was
deeply impressed by their Productive Ward Pilot. By taking small
but significant steps, nurses have freed up time to make enormous
improvements to patient care.
"The programme works because nurses have total ownership.
The power is in their hands to make changes. I want to work with
the RCN and ward sisters to encourage more Trusts to put the
principles of the Productive Ward programme into action across all
their wards, increasing the time nurses spend with patients and
enabling them to do the job they were trained for."
Dr. Peter Carter, Chief Executive & General Secretary of the
Royal College of Nursing, said:
"More than anything, nurses wish to provide high quality
care. The RCN is very pleased to say that the national rollout of
the Productive Ward programme will help to do just that. Frontline
staff work on wards, day in day out and are best placed to devise
and implement the changes that will allow them to spend more time
at the bedside caring for patients. The RCN would welcome further
government moves to ensure that future changes to the delivery of
healthcare are locally-led and clinically driven."
Thanks to record investment over the past 10 years, there are
80,000 more nurses working in the NHS. Their role has changed
significantly in that time. With better training opportunities,
nurses have greater responsibility and carry out more specialist
work. As their roles change, the day-to-day organisation of wards
must change to free up as much time as possible for nurses to
spend on patient care.
Empowering staff to drive forward improvements in the health
service on the frontline, rather than having change imposed on
them from Whitehall, is a cornerstone of Lord Darzi's ongoing
review of the NHS. The Productive Ward programme demonstrates the
benefits of this approach to health reform - clinically driven and
locally led.
Notes to editors:
1. The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement's
Releasing Time to Care Productive Ward programme was officially
launched on 25th January 2008 following a series of pilot
programmes around the country.
2. The four original pilot sites were Basingstoke & North
Hampshire NHS Foundation Trust, The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen
University Hospitals NHS Trust, Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation
Trust and Luton and Dunstable Hospital NHS Trust. These were
followed by two "whole hospital" sites at Nottingham
University Hospitals NHS Trust and Central Manchester &
Manchester Children's University Hospitals NHS Trust.
3. 80 per cent of Trusts have already signed up to the Productive
Ward programme. The £50m investment will allow Ward Sisters to
take advantage of the Productive Ward tools so that every ward has
the opportunity to think about how they can reduce unnecessary
paperwork and increase the amount of time they spend on direct
patient care.
4. We have asked SHA Directors of Nursing to report back to the
Chief Nursing Officer by the end of October 2008, outlining where
and how the money has been spent, as well as the benefits achieved.