Benchmarking in nursing care by the RAFAELA patient classification system – a possibility for nurse managers

Abstract

The study shows that benchmarking with the RAFAELA system provides many opportunities for the nurse managers' resource allocation and their personnel administration.

Nursing Activities Score: an updated guideline for its application in the Intensive Care Unit

“…In this context, tools for assessing nursing workload were developed (7)(8)(9) . Among these tools there are several models of the Therapeutic Interventions Scoring System (TISS) (10)(11)(12)(13) , one of which is the Nursing Activities Score (NAS) which was launched in 2003 (14) .…”

Fuzzy logic applied to a Patient Classification System

“…For each characteristic is defined a score proportional to its importance for the final patient assessment. In particular, five levels of importance are defined and associated to specific scores: weak importance (2), sufficient importance (4), moderate importance (6), normal importance (8) and high importance (10). Only even numbers are used as scores to simplify following calculations.…”

“…Moreover, the same PCS methods are usually applied in different clinical fields without any relevant adaptation, as for the obstetrical field [10].…”

Building a Nursing Productivity Measure Based on the Synergy Model: First Steps

“…Many investigators have linked nursing staff indicators and nurse staffing with patients' outcomes. [9][10][11][12][13] Although researchers 11,14 have reported a decrease in complication rates with increased availability of nursing resources, costcontainment strategies in health care often lead to restructuring and rationing of resources, which in turn often reduces nurse to patient ratios and efficiency. Efforts to improve the efficiency of delivery of nursing care have led to the development and application of a number of nursing productivity systems that attempt to quantify patients' and nurses' activities, identify optimal nurse to patient ratios, and measure costs.…”

“…15,16 Nursing productivity systems based on patients' acuity, rationing of nursing care, fair allocation of resources, and nursing workload have been developed. 10,14,[17][18][19][20][21][22] Many of these classification and productivity systems were developed years ago and were not designed to capture the full spectrum of nursing practice. Although all of these nursing productivity systems strive to optimize nursing efficiency, critiques of their application include the inability to fully capture both the level of nursing intensity and expertise required by an individual patient and the patient's family.…”