Every quarter I send an e-mail to my staff informing them that we will be conducting 2 weeks of "Intenstiy Study". At my institution the term Intensity Study is used to describe the period of time that the chemo nurses collect data on the various types of care provided to the patients and calculate the actual nursing time spent with them. Every chemotherapy drug, regimine, supportive medication, injection, blood draw, and follow-up phone call is assigned an Intensity Level of 1-5 based on the nursing time required by the nurse to provide the care required for the treatment/intervention to the patient. The process of collecting the data is quite labor intensive and it's probably one of the least favorite tasks for the nurses, however the information that the Intensity Study provides once the data is collected is very important. Results from the Intensity Study compare the amount of "actual" nurses to the "proposed" amount of nurses that are actually need to care for the patient load based on the intensity levels collected. We use this tool to monitor the "real" intensity of the workload as opposed to using the nurses anecdotal feedback of "we're so busy". The results justify the need for new postions and help us to plan appropriately for future staffing needs.
How do you measure nursing workload in your own practice?
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