Philippine E-Journals

PATIENT TURNOVER, NURSING WORKLOADS AND OUTCOMES OF CARE: ITS IMPACT ON QUALITY OF CARE

John Mark Lingcon | Cherryl L Alinsub

 

Abstract:

A descriptive non-experimental type of research was used to determine the patient turnover to nursing workloads through outcomes of care. The study was conducted from a selected hospital in Laguna and was composed of (66) registered nurses as respondents selected through purposive sampling. Data were gathered through a survey questionnaire created from a round table discussion. Researchers used frequency count and weighted mean to describe the occurrence of patient turnover, to determine nurse respondents’ compliance to nursing workloads, and to define outcomes of care. Meanwhile, Pearson’s r test of correlation was used to answer how patient turnover impacts nursing workloads and the effect of nursing workloads to outcomes of care. Also, a regression test was performed to solve for the p-value noting whether to accept or reject the stated null hypothesis. The results of variables patient turnover and nursing workloads had a computed Pearson’s r coefficient of (r = 0.94) and a regression p-value of (p = 0.01) less than the level of significance (α = 0.05) suggesting that there is a strong relationship between patient turnover and nursing workloads; a faulty patient turnover results in performance of nursing workloads to fail. Also, the study noted a computed Pearson’s r coefficient of (r = 0.88) and a regression p-value of (p = 0.05) equal to the level of significance (α = 0.05) for variables nursing workloads and outcomes of care proposing that there is a significant impact of nursing workloads in outcomes of care to patients; inconsistent nursing workloads result to poor outcomes of care. The findings of the study lead to recommend that processes in patient turnover should be tailored in a manner that it will not greatly affect nurses’ performance of nursing workloads. Processes should not take much of nurses’ working time and increase working demands. Furthermore, nurse managers may assign charge nurses to facilitate processes (completing the charts, securing consent) to admissions, transfers, HAMA, and discharges, and once done they may endorse it to staff nurses. In this way, staff nurses will get to focus on their respective patients only.