Project R-14688

Unlocking the power of automatically recorded task execution data to support nurses as they generate work organisation improvement ideas: novel methods and insights (Research)

In many countries, hospitals are struggling with chronic nurse understaffing and significant shortages in the nursing labour market. As a result, hospitals are looking for ways to improve the work organisation to manage their daily operations with limited nursing staff. As nurses experience the organisation of work on a daily basis, bringing them together is highly valuable to generate work organisation improvement ideas. To ensure that the occurrence of perceived issues is well understood and to avoid improvement options being overlooked, this project provides data-driven support to nurses as they generate work organisation improvement ideas. To this end, automatically recorded task execution data from the hospital information system and real-time location systems are used instead of data collected using labour-intensive methods such as diary keeping or extensive observations. Two research gaps currently prevent us from providing the desired data-driven support: (i) the absence of a method to identify the execution of nursing tasks by combining different sources of automatically recorded task execution data, and (ii) the absence of a method to retrieve and visualise work organisation patterns from task execution data. This project tackles both research gaps by creating highly innovative and generic methods, pushing the state-of-the-art significantly forward. Moreover, partnerships with hospitals highlight the substantial societal relevance of the created methods.

01 January 2024 - 31 December 2027