How the NHS can never find anything

A recent article on BBC News has reported that nurses spend up to two hours each shift trying to find items that are needed to provide care. That equates to 40 hours a month, which is basically one whole week in four worked spent ferreting around looking for lost bits and bobs. Their proposal was to use a scanning system that locates items, not unlike those used in a pharmacy.

I would, for the most part, agree that a lot of time is lost searching for things. Especially if the nurse is new on a ward, as items are often in completely different places on different wards, even if they have the same floor plan. A recent NHS initiative - the Productive Ward - is supposed to improve this by bringing all staff together and streamlining services and focussing on providing care. The tagline of the Productive Ward is "releasing time to care", which seems an apt description. There has been resistance to its infiltration of the NHS, but this has mostly been from older nurses, HCA's and auxiliaries.

The Productive Ward will be hitting a hospital near you soon - however anything that releases time for patients, and improves their care can only be a good thing.