Enhancing ICU Nurse Redeployment Practices: A Qualitative Improvement Study of Support Interventions

Nurse redeployment is the movement of staff from their usual area of work to another area in response to staff shortage or increased care needs. A primary study examining the experiences of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nurses reveals negative perceptions and challenges associated with redeployment. This quality improvement study is conducted to address gaps in areas of practice that are little understood and significantly impact patients and staff. This study aims to explore interventions to improve ICU staff experience during redeployment to other clinical areas.

Purposive convenience sampling and qualitative interviews were conducted following the implementation of recommended interventions from the primary study. All participants who completed two buddy redeployment shifts were eligible to participate in the interviews. An external qualitative nurse researcher conducted semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed using an inductive analysis method, and the COREQ guidelines were used for reporting.

Data analysis showed major themes of communication challenges, risks, emotional burden, and perspective. The subthemes highlighted the need for better communication due to lack of information clarity and instruction uncertainty, a clear escalation plan to raise issues and concerns, workload imbalance due to task uncertainty, task division, and negative comments, emotional challenges resulting in negative sentiments and staff views that were not considered during the redeployment planning process due to a lack of feedback and suggestions.

The findings indicated that though efforts were made to improve the redeployment experience for ICU nursing staff through information and education, the challenges and gaps between an exposure buddy shift to gain a targeted understanding of the ward's workflow, compared to a structured orientation process, are significant. Further research on an orientation process and adequate resourcing before redeploying ICU staff to other units should be conducted and analyzed.