What you can offer your Nurses via the right unified communication solution

It’s no secret that there’s a significant nursing shortage in Australia. In fact, research by Health Workforce Australia (HWA) shows that, due to the aging workforce and many other factors, there could be a shortfall of more than 100,000 nurses by 2025, and 123,000 by 2030.

A recent report found that 42% of nurses in Australia are less willing to work in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, due to increasingly unmanageable workloads, among other factors.

Shift length is one of the most cited causes of nursing turnover, with organisations that utilise 12-hour shifts reporting challenges with retention. The McKinsey 2021 Future of Work in Nursing Survey found that one-fifth of Australia’s registered nurses say they intend to leave their current role in the next 12 months. Forty-one percent of these nurses say they are planning to move countries or leave direct-care roles entirely. By 2025, anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 nursing positions could be left unfilled.

From these trends, we can determine that nurses leave because they feel undervalued, unsupported, and overstressed. The same survey found that “the most influential factors of whether to stay in the role included safety, flexibility, and environment.” The good news is that there are technology tools you can use to positively impact all three of these areas.

One of the most effective ones is a unified communication platform, which can help nurses stay connected with colleagues, give them an easy way to manage their time, and provide a measure of safety. Unified communication solutions are software applications that augment mobile devices with the features and functions of many different apps. Here are some examples of what you can offer your nurses via the right unified communication solution on their clinical mobile devices:

1. Better sense of empowerment:

Healthcare is not a solo endeavour. A unified communication solution enables nurses to reach out and request help instantly. When your care team can work collaboratively, the work doesn’t seem as lonely or overwhelming, and outcomes will improve — helping with job satisfaction and retention.

Many nurses may start to feel overwhelmed, overstressed, or bored with their jobs. Cross-training can be used as a countermeasure, empowering them to take on roles in other departments or even new roles within their current one, relieving feelings of mundanity and boredom.

If they have access to a unified communication solution on their clinical mobile device, they’ll be better able to be guided through new responsibilities. For example, the profile management feature can give each nurse access to tasks and functions of various departments for which they may be asked to support. If a nurse is asked to cover for a colleague, they can pull up the unified communications app and automatically see contact lists and connect with team members they’ll be working with that day.

2. A safety net:

A nurse shortage inevitably means those who are available must cover more ground — and often alone. It has become increasingly common for nurses to cover large areas of vast healthcare facilities by themselves. This can create a significant safety issue, as emergencies could occur without adequate backup.

The best solutions contain emergency call features that are auto-prioritised. Should a nurse encounter a threatening situation and need backup, a simple push of the emergency button quickly overrides all other calls in progress and routes assistance. The right unified communications solution will come further equipped with a ‘drop detect’ feature that identifies when a nurse’s device has fallen and hit the ground. A lack of response post-impact alerts security and management to the situation and location of the incident, ensuring that the nurse is never out of reach of assistance.

3. Better sense of appreciation:

Nurses deserve recognition and praise for their work, and many feel unnoticed and underappreciated. Otherwise-unable supervisors can easily express their appreciation or gratitude to staff by simply selecting an individual or premade group and sending a message. Staff enjoy a sense of appreciation, and the feedback provider gives supervisors an easy way to empower and communicate with their staff.

4. Increased floor support:

One of the toughest challenges faced by nurses is patient overload, especially when covering multiple areas at once. Unified communication solutions offer location capabilities for easy task delegation and collaboration — a huge advantage in patient care.

Consider an ER nurse who is called away from their patients to assist with a new arrival. As they take the new patient’s vitals, their device indicates that another patient requires assistance. The nurse can see through the location component of their solution that a backup is still at the ER nurse station. Knowing they are nearby, all the nurse needs to do is push a button and ask for help. Both patients receive timely care thanks to seamless collaboration enabled by location services.

5. Easier task management:

A nurse’s day is full of judgement calls and real-time decision-making, both of which cause undue stress. Unified communication solutions with task management capabilities remove guesswork by automatically prioritising routine tasks, such as taking vitals, administering medication and assessing symptoms.

Naturally, emergencies will arise, forcing the nurse to change plans. An effective task tracker ensures they can easily pivot from routine tasks during the emergency, and then easily switch back after emergencies pass.

6. Asset traceability:

Asset traceability is becoming an increasingly common requirement due to a government mandate requiring hospitals to have a traceability process for critical and semi-critical equipment, instruments, and devices. This traceability process should be capable of identifying a patient, their procedure, and any reusable equipment, instruments, and devices that were used for the procedure. Asset traceability ensures accountability and helps streamline workflows, reducing the risk of errors and improving patient safety. By implementing effective asset traceability systems, healthcare facilities can comply with regulatory requirements and enhance the overall workforce efficiency of their nurses.

The takeaway:

There’s widespread consensus among those in the healthcare community that increased mobile technology use can have a profound impact on the cost, quality and speed of patient care.

In Zebra’s latest Global Healthcare Vision Study, nurse managers reported a 46% reduction in patient care issues related to communication breakdowns since their hospitals introduced clinical smartphones and other mobility solutions.

Learn more about Zebra’s range of clinical mobility solutions developed specifically for healthcare.

Image credit: iStock.com/MartinPrescott