| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 醫務管理研究所 === 104 === Introduction
Unnecessary and excessive walking add both physical and mental fatigue among nurses as well as resulting to a waste of their staff time. More importantly, it may also increase negative impacts on patients' healthcare and safety. This study aims to explore factors that influence the nursing journey map.
Methods
We conducted a survey through on-site observation and interviewing nurses of the chest medicine ward. The Real-Time Location System (RTLS) was used to monitor nurses’ location and movements. All information was collected in a regional hospital located in northern Taiwan. Nursing journey map was drawn by using the RTLS data (24 movement data was included). We used both survey and RTLS data to determine the influencing factors of nursing journey map.
Results
Nurses’ movement pattern observed shows that nurses tend to stay in specific locations such as nursing stations, wards and corridors, while spending more than half of their working hours in nursing stations and wards. The average walking distance was 8.7 kilometers per 8 hours. The highest average walking distance was found among the evening shift nurses (9.2 kilometers), followed by the day shift (8.8 kilometers) and the night shift nurses (8.1 kilometers). Patient's condition changes, interaction between patients' family and nursing staff, nurse seniority, ward space design and layout, placement of communication equipment and monitoring equipment are major factors that influence nursing journey map.
Conclusion
The patterns of nursing journey map in our study were similar to researches performed in Western countries, yet our average nurse walking distances was almost 2 times higher. Ergonomically designed ward with advanced communication and monitor technology may reduce unnecessary nurse walking distance.
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