Time Study RN/MD National Benchmarking Database

Discover how Nursing Policy is Impacting your Nurse's Workload

In 2005, several TCAB hospitals expressed an interest to compare their Time Study RN performance with other hospitals using Time Study RN nationally. In 2006, RMC formed and funded the Time Study RN National Benchmarking Database and invited all Time Study RN users to participate. Time Study RN users participate by completing an enrollment form that includes key demographic information about their unit and they send their Time Study RN data to the data processing team, who processes the data into the database. All hospital data is reported anonymously for complete confidentiality among teams and the program is FREE to all participating hospitals. Participation in the database allows each participating hospital to compare performance with the National Benchmarks. In addition, collaboration is encouraged among participating hospitals.

A primary purpose of the database is to help hospital teams answer key questions about Nursing policy at the unit level and learn how those policy decisions impact Nurse workload. For example, the impact of an electronic health record implementation on care giver time is critical information for Nursing managers who are tasked with maintaining a high level of care during an implementation. Do you know that the best performing and worst performing hospital units for Nursing time spent in documentation have EMR systems. Wouldn’t it be smart to talk with the best performers to learn about what they did right? Would you like to know how hospital units with certain EMR vendors perform, before you make an EMR decision?
Studies are limited in scope to a hospital unit. The sampling plan includes a minimum of 2 PDA’s per hospital unit. This allows one PDA to be charging while the other PDA is in use. PDA’s should not be handed from one shift to the next because shift overlap will result in missed data. To avoid this error, each care giver will always start their shift by taking a charging PDA, and at the end of their shift will place the PDA back in the charging cable.

The study requires 385 data points per month to achieve 95% confidence and a 5% error. The PDA’s are automatically programmed to collect this data over 7 - 24 continuous hours of sampling. A 30 minute training session performed on www.gotomeeting.com is provided to all participants. The training session teaches users how to use the PDA’s and download data to the PC.

The Time Study RN National Benchmarking Database provides a portal for Nursing Managers and Executives to research and answer specific questions about Nursing Policy and its impact on the Nurses Workload!

The National Benchmarking Database Web Portal which will be launched in August 2009 will provide a way for participants to interface with the database intimately. The portal will manage the data transfer and reporting capabilities for participants. Participants will be able to perform complex filters on any demographic in the database and view the Nursing time on any work activity or group of work activities based on those filters. Participants will also be able to create their own custom activity groupings and fully customize the reporting based on their own criteria. Standardized charts and graphs will be provided for analysis and reporting.

Every Participant is a Research Partner

The database has grown based on the need to answer specific questions that are relevant at the time. As specific research interests arise among participants, users can add relevant demographics to the database that address their specific research interests and promote those demographics to all other participants.

Standardized Milestones

The portal will also provide a tool for participating hospitals to track their improvement activities and post milestones to their charts and graphs. Wouldn’t it be nice as performance improves over time, to show the projects that were implements as milestones along the way. By standardizing the terminology among hospitals the database becomes a powerful tool for collaboration and research.

Over 350 Hospital Units now Participate in the Time Study RN National Benchmarking Database Project!

With over 50,000 Nurse shifts of data and growing daily, the Time Study RN National Benchmarking Database has captured the interest of researchers around North America. In addition to providing valuable benchmarking and collaboration opportunities for participating hospitals, the database is crucial to understanding the impact of Nursing policy on the Nurses workload and may be an important tool impacting national and state policy on critical issues such as mandatory staffing ratios.