New system reduces nurses’ workload

Press, 16 January 1986, Page 7

New system reduces nurses’ workload

A new screening system at The Princess Margaret Hospital might solve problems with acute medical beds being filled up with geriatric patients. The screening holding unit at the hospital opened on Monday and already patients sent to the hospital for acute admission have been either sent home or to other hospitals, said the medical superintendent, Dr John McLeod.

The new screening system was one of the measures initiated by the Canterbury Hospital Board’s joint working party with the New Zealand Nurses’ Association to try to relieve pressure on staff at the hospital.

It meant that patients, when they went to the hospital, would first be screened by the two nurses at the unit. The staff would look at the patient’s medical problems and decide what

priority should be given, said Dr McLeod.

“In the past it has been an open door policy here and we have had a pretty undifferentiated flow. They all come routinely into the acute general medical beds and it is some days before they are sorted out administratively and clinically and are sent to the appropriate area,” he told the board’s health services committee.

This mostly happened with elderly patients, he said, many of whom would be best in the geriatric assessment unit, rather than an acute medical bed.

The problem had led to overcrowding at the hospital and to severe pressure on staff who had to cope with bed occupancy levels of up to 95 per cent.

Last month the average bed occupancy was down to

“an unbelievable 76 per cent,” he said. This was because of threats of industrial action by various sectors where elective routine surgery was cancelled. However, the new system should keep those figures down.

Dr McLeod said that elderly people could now expect to be sent home instead of being admitted. Often the problem was more social than medical, he said.

An example of this was a geriatric patient suffering from a minor illness, such as acute bronchitis.

“This may be the last straw for a geriatric patient who is already a strain on the relatives.” Dr McLeod said that to cope with fewer people being admitted, the community was going to have to “roll up its sleeves and look after them itself.”