Nurse Controls within services

Human impact story perspective: staff

When NHSGGC implemented Microsoft Office 365 (MS365) within the Clyde sector, several meetings and discussions with admin staff and management were held to plan and prepare for email and data migration. Service areas included Surgical Specialities and Endoscopy and Theatres, who share aspects of their administration. As part of this process we determined that various repetitive processes and procedures existed, that staff conducted on a daily and weekly basis. The main item of note was the use of Nurse Controls within services. These were spreadsheets that contained staff absence information and costs to maintain the correct number of resources for each ward.  

A Senior Charge Nurse (SCN) completed the spreadsheet every week and emailed them to admin staff to collate and process.  

Across 14 wards SCNs spent around 7 hours per week/330 hours per annum completing the spreadsheets. In addition, the admin staff spent on average 2 hours per week/32 hours per annum, managing the 650 spreadsheets. With the introduction of shared files powered by MS365 cloud technology, an opportunity was spotted to find a more efficient way to manage Nurse Controls. Using SharePoint Online and Excel Online (both part of the Microsoft Office 365 solution) we were able to improve data quality and overall management, whilst reducing email volume.  

We created a new SharePoint site for the service and updated the current spreadsheet with a new master template for each ward. We anticipate this has reduced the annual time spent by admin staff on Nurse controls from approx. 30 hours to 10 hours a year.  

The service now uses the SharePoint site as a central location for ward information, including fire safety Audit, Shift Information, Turas Reports and Annual Leave.