Fitbits可能是护士疲劳的答案

Hospital nurses spend a lot of time on their feet. Their work is physical, taxing, even grueling. Lifting patients, pushing and pulling heavy equipment, moving supplies. Factor in 12-hour shifts, irregular schedules, constant interruptions and all the other demands of life, and it is no wonder that nurses struggle with fatigue.

而挫折个别护士、疲劳is also an even bigger problem than that. Linsey Steege, a human factors engineer and UW–Madison nursing professor, says fatigue contributes to medical errors and staff attrition, both of which can have devastating consequences for patients while also driving up cost for health systems and consumers. “I became interested in focusing on how to improve how we support nurses so that they in turn can be safe and provide the highest quality patient care,” she said.”[But] when I looked around, there was a lot of research on physical fatigue [and] sleep deprivation for medical residents, but much less on how nursing work is contributing to fatigue and how fatigue is contributing to stress, burnout, and worst of all, medical error.”

Fatigue is also a key reason that nurses leave the field, which already faces a workforce shortage that challenges health systems, particularly in rural areas, to provide safe and effective care.

Measuring the demands of nursing

作为一名工程师,Steege看起来特别at how nurses operate within and are affected by the workplace in order to determine what health systems and the nurses themselves could change to minimize fatigue and its effects. Yet before she could offer a solution, Steege had to figure out what factors cause fatigue and in what circumstances.

第一步是收集数据，并且对于第一个挑战而言，我们可以直接衡量加起来疲劳的需求而不会增加更多的负担吗？斯莱格说，要求已经在努力努力做疲劳的人努力做更多 - 甚至是填写调查的东西，“斯莱格说。“它进一步负担已经负担的员工，如果护士等待直到稍后的时间，他们可能会休息或恢复以提供反馈，可能会损害数据的完整性。他们的回忆可能不是目前他们印象的准确性。“

虽然Steege的研究确实涉及转变过程中的一些直接护士反馈，但她的研究的关键是被动数据收集。

The role of Fitbits

这是Fitbits进来的地方。斯莱格研究的护士佩戴活动跟踪器，记录阶梯，心率和睡眠信息，所有这些都分析以确定工作需求如何影响疲劳水平。

Steege实际上使用各种被动数据收集工具，这些工具提供比消费者可穿戴跟踪器捕获更多细节。她还进入其他数据来源，收集关于噪声水平，页面和呼叫量等工作环境的额外因素，电子健康记录中花费的时间，护士运动模式，转移人员指示报告和指示如何“的患者敏锐性数据。SICK“特定的患者负荷是 - 她在物理活动数据的顶部层面，以便在任何给定护士上的任何给定的转变的收费的更清晰的图片。

She compares the approach to the oil-change monitoring on cars. Auto engineers design the monitoring systems to capture not only miles driven but also terrain, weather conditions, and even driving speed and style to determine when an oil changes is needed. Car owners do not have to manually enter the quality of roadways or wind velocity on a particularly trip. The vehicles do all that automatically—passively—and then recommend when maintenance is required. The result is that maintenance schedules vary from car to car, driver to driver.

Steege is trying to do the same thing with the nurses she studies: gather as much information about their work environment and how they interact with it to determine what factors are the biggest contributors to fatigue, when in a shift those factors are most problematic, and, ultimately, how much fatigue is too much. Eventually Steege wants to develop strategies that are flexible enough to account for the variability of nursing practice—from shift to shift and from nurse to nurse—and that enable health systems to design staffing policies and schedules that recognize the causes of fatigue and minimize the impact of it on nurses and patients.

“这就是人类因素设计或修改工作环境，以优化性能，同时保持人们的安全，”斯莱格说。“医院是工作环境。我们倾向于专注于患者的安全性，但我们也需要考虑护士安全和福祉。如果卫生系统不考虑其护士的疲劳负担，医疗错误和营业额都会增加。“

护士是人口急剧研究，但她鼓励卫生系统密切关注所有提供商的疲劳和其他健康问题。她指出，当护士，医生或治疗师是不健康的时候，护理本质上是妥协的。因此，如果卫生系统真正有兴趣提供高质量的护理，她说，他们必须参加他们提供者的健康和福祉。“我们不能通过单独强调自我照顾作为一种解决疲劳的解决方案，”我们不能将问题推向护士。“斯莱格说。”它已经让我们一段时间来到这里，但健康系统就会意识到工作环境和不宣传的工作环境和政策这实际上破坏了提供者健康是卫生系统解决的问题。“