Using a nursing-workload index to validate hospital pharmacy productivity

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Pharmacy Administration
• Nursing Informatics

Background:

• Manual pharmacy workload reporting systems can be complex and require validation.
• Hospital productivity measurement often involves monitoring numerous departmental activities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the utility of the Medicus nursing workload index for simplifying and validating a manual pharmacy workload reporting system.
• To compare the predictive reliability of the nursing workload index against patient days for estimating pharmacy workload.

Main Methods:

• A 20-week study was conducted in a 290-bed hospital.
• The study evaluated the correlation between nursing workload index data and pharmacy service hours.
• Pharmacy workload was measured by 14 monitored activities.

Main Results:

• A significant correlation was found between the nursing workload index and earned pharmacy hours, even when excluding admission/discharge processing.
• Significant correlations were also observed using patient days, but these were less robust.
• The nursing workload index demonstrated utility in validating pharmacy workload data.

Conclusions:

• The Medicus nursing workload index serves as a valuable tool for validating pharmacy workload data.
• This nursing indicator offers a more reliable method for predicting pharmacy workload compared to traditional patient-day metrics.