Looking for the best WOW: understanding the nurses need

LUNA, D.; SCHACHNER, BIBIANA; GONZALEZ, ZULMA; CANO, RODRIGO; BENITEZ, SONIA

Congreso; Medinfo 2017, 16th World Congress on Health (Medical) Informatics; 2017

The effective use of nurses' time for providing increasinglysafe, efficient, and patient-centered care is a major concernfor healthcare managers as well as for nurses themselves.Different solutions have been used aimed at improving thosetimes by providing nurses with mobile and 'on wheels?alternatives for bedside care. Nevertheless, the selection ofsolutions is still a complicated organizational decision. Thispaper describes the evaluation of ergonomic characteristics offive local mobile carts for the bedside nursing care at HospitalItaliano de Buenos Aires. Cornell University?s checklist wasused for data collection according to five domains: carhandling, work surface and data load, documents and screenreading, storage and dimensions, and energy and cleaning.Considering the scarcity of literature on needs for WOWsassessment, the findings of this paper represent a valuableapproach to the requirements of nurses in real workenvironments and a support for decision-making based onnursing observations.