• 대한간호학회지
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• 제22권4호
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• pp.589-603
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• 1992

This study investigated a process to estimate the need for nursing staff on the basis of a patient elassification system and the required care needs and activities. The investigation was carried out in the following four steps. Step 1. Patients were classified according to the amount of nursing care need on each shift as class I (mildly ill), class II (mederately ill), class III (acutely ill), and class IV (critically ill). Step 2. Measurement of the direct nursing care hours needed for each patient class, and measurement of indirect nursing care hourse and personal time of the nursing staff. Step 3. Calculation of he total nursing workload in a nursing unit. Step 4. Estimation of the nursing staff needed. The investigation was carried out from July 17th to 30th, during 24hours every other day. The subjects were the patients and the nursing staff on two units of Seoul National University Hospital, Korea. Some of the results from the investigation are as follows : 1) Distribution of patient classification On the neuro surgical (N.S.), the distribution was class I, 22 patient, 3, class II, 27 patients, class III, 26 patients, and class IV, 25 patients, For the orthopedic surgical unit(0.5.), it was class I, 43 patients, class II, 43 patients, class III, patients, and class IV, 3 patients. 2) Direct nursing care hours per day On the N.S. unit, 3.2 hours of direct nursing care were needed for class I, 3.9 hours for class II, 5.1 hours of class III, and 6.2 hours for class IV patients, while 2.0 hours for class I, 2.5 hours for class II, 3.5 hours for class III, 5.0 hours class IV patients were needed on the 0.5. units. 3) Analysis of direct nursing care activities Activities were classified into assessment and observation(47%), medication(38.7%), communiontion(5.1%), exercise(2.4%), elimination and irrigation(1.3%), treatmemt(1.1%), hygiene(0.8%), nutrition(0.8%), and hot and cold compress(0.1%). 4) Average hours of indirect nursing care per day. On the N.S. unit 4.2 hours, and on the O.S. unit, 3.5 hours of RN indirect care was needed. 5) The average personal time used by the of nursing staff was 17 minutes for both RNs and nursing assistants in the N.S. unit, and 32 minutes for both RNs and nursing assistants in the O.S. unit. 6) Estimation of nursing staff needed on two specialized units of a university hospital For the N.S. nursing unit of 43 beds, 31 nursing staff would be indicated. For the 0.5. nursing unit of the same number of beds, 19 nursing staff would be indicated.

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제37권2호
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• pp.75-83
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• 2016

Nursing staffing is of major interest in hospital management, however, no practical method has been developed. The present study proposed a mathematical model based on the patient classification system for nursing staffing optimization. A few characteristic parameters possibly determined experimentally and/or empirically were introduced followed by systematic calculation of the required number of nurses. An essential concept of the model is the unit work load defined as the amount of nursing work performed on single patient per unit time, where the work load is defined as the number of nursing staffs multiplied by the working hours. The unit work load was considered to vary with the patient classification level as well as the working time during a day, both of which were represented by corresponding parameter values. The number of patients for each class and the number of working hours were multiplied to the unit work load, and added up to obtain the total required work load. As the next step, the averaged number of hours that a nurse could provide per day was formulated considering the degree of nursing practice experience into 3 levels. Finally, the appropriate number of nursing staffs was calculated as the total work load divided by the average working hours per nurse. The present technique has a great advantage that the number of nursing staffs to fulfill the required work load is systematically calculated once the characteristic parameters are appropriately determined, leading to instant and fast evaluation. A practical PC program was also developed to apply the present model to nursing practice.