A Study of Nursing Manpower Requirements based on the Nursing Times spent in Operating Room of an University Hospital

수술실 간호인력의 수요측정 및 간호제공량분석 - 수술대기시간과 수술시간을 중심으로 -

This Study was an attempt to estimate the optimum numbers of Operating Room Nursing Manpower by measuring the amount of service hours required by the patients in Operating Room in relation to the service amount actually provided by the nurses. The major concern of this study was placed on the measurement of Nursing Service Requirements by using the Operating Room (O. R) Patient Acuity System recently developed by M. M. Hart to classify the O. R. patients into four groups according to the degree of the complexity of operative procedure and some other elements which increase nursing activities in respect of patient care; Acuity IV group is the one requires nursing services most, on the other hand Acuity I requires least. nu sing The objectives of this study were as follows; 1. To analyze functions of the nursing personnel in O. R. by time unit and to estimate the average time a nurse can activate for productive functions. 2. To measure the actual amount of nursing times provided by nurses to the surgical patients. 3. To develop a patient classification system in order to measure the amount of Nursing services required by the patients. 4. To calculate an appropriate number of nursing manpower to meet the needs of the patients. In order to conduct the research both selected nurses and patients in 'S' University Hospital were Studied by utilizing the O. R. Patient Acuity System as well as the Classification Chart developed by Association of Operating Room Nurses (A. O. R. N) as a means of classifying functions of O. R. nurses. That is; Functions of the 10 selected O. R. nurses observed during the period of June 30 to July 4, 1986, whereas the amount of nursing services required by or provided to the 974 patients who had received surgeries during the period of June 9 to July 4, 1986. The results of this study were as follows; 1) The actual working hours per a nurse averaged 6.7 hours a day. 2) Each nurse's daily routine schedule consists of $71.4\%$ for Technical Functions, $16.1\%$ for Nonprodective Functions, $6.6\%$ for Assessment and Evaluation, $3.9\%$ for Overseeing and Supervision and the rest $2.0\%$ for Patient Preparation respectively. 3) Preoperative waiting time per a patient was 24.1 minutes on the average; for the first case was 10.7 minutes, whereas for the following cases was 32.0 minutes. 4) Total Operation time for the 974 patients during the period of observation for this study amounted to 2759.6 hours, weekly hour was equivalent to 689.9 hours, Whereas daily operation time averaged 130 hours. Meanwhile the average operation time per patient was 2.8 hours ; for the case of Acuity IV was 5.6 hours, 5. 1 hours for the case of Acuity III, 2.3 hours for Acuity II and 1.1 hours for Acuity I. 5) According to the O. R. Patient Acuity System, $64.5\%$ of the whole patients belonged to Acuity II, $23.7\%$ to Acuity III, 11. $3\%$ to Acuity IV and $0.7\%$ to Acuity I respectively. 6) Required amount of nursing times based on the preoperative waiting time and operation time was 7167.8 person hours, which showed that $5.5\%$ of them needed for preoperative nursing care, whereas the rest $94.5\%$ for intraoperative nursing care. In terms of the O. R. Patient Acuity System, $49.7\%$ of total nursing service requirements was needed for Acuity II patients, $27.4\%$ for Acuity III patients, $17.2\%$ for Acuity IV patients and $0.2\%$ for Acuity I patients. 7) The rate of the nursing services provided against the required nursing times was about $81.4\%$ on the average; some departments, like those of Plastic Surgery, Otolaryngology and Ophthalmology whose patients mostly belonged to Acuity II recorded hegher provision rate than average, whereas other departments of Thoracic Surgery. Neurosurgery and Orthopedic Surgery whose patients belonged to Acuity III and Acuity IV as well as Acuity II recorded lower provision rate than average. 8) Subsequently, required numbers of nursing manpower was 10.7 nurses additionally. Based on the above findings the following recommendations will be made; 1) this study recommends, develops. and adopts an accurate and realistic O. R. Patient Acuity System which can help measure the nursing service requirements objectively to elicit the rationales of allocation of nursing personnels. 2) this study proposes storongly place nurses who take the role of preoperative nursing care exclusively for the waiting patients in O. R. and shortening their waiting time by close communication between the designated O. R. and the ward.