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You try to never get behind

Nursing researcher Patricia Ebright digs into the art of delivering safe patient care

Crop of new nurses to benefit

Imagine this. You are a nurse working first shift. You show up and start in on a full plate of responsibilities. You have eight hours to accomplish everything. There’s clinical care for patients, all the charting, and the job of coordinating the teams who give good, solid care to every patient.

Then the surprises begin. A patient’s health takes a turn. You need a catheter right this minute, and the supply room is out. Patient call lights go off and your pager sounds. Two new patients show up - you do everything to admit, assess and welcome them. Three others need discharge preparation and education. The tech is busy with other patients. The wheelchair isn’t kept where it’s supposed to be so you walk all over looking for it. Someone calls in – you agree to stay on for a second shift.

Interruptions and unpredictability are part and parcel of nursing work. So too, and too often, are operational system gaps requiring “workarounds.”

The art of managing multiple tasks in the midst of unpredictability on the job is called stacking. Research shows that all nurses stack. IU School of Nursing professor and Center investigator Patricia Ebright, DNS, RN, herself a nurse for 35 years, plans to learn about stacking strategies from direct care provider nurses. Then she will design, with fellow faculty, how to teach effective stacking techniques to nursing students.

The National Patient Safety Foundation awarded Ebright a grant to determine how to bring stacking into nursing education.

Her research comes right in time. New nurses are being heavily recruited into the field in hopes of solving the national nursing shortage. This cohort is likely to swell the ranks of nursing personnel over the next few years, however research teaches us that experienced RNs are significantly better than rookies are at dealing with a dynamic to-do list.

Ebright’s stacking research also helps identify operational gaps and workarounds that threaten patient safety and compromise the nursing work environment. Her findings will contribute to design strategies for providing a supportive, quality experience for patients and healthcare personnel alike.

She is a former research fellow at the VA Getting at Patient Safety (GAPS) Center in Cincinnati.