Time Management in Nursing Practice

The topic of time management was chosen considering its sensitivity in patient care and the well-being of the nurses. Time management is the link between service delivery to patients and the efficacy of patient treatment and recovery. In healthcare, time management affects when patients receive medical care and how the medical practitioners deliver the care. The efficiency of healthcare workers is determined by the ability to provide care at the right time and in the right way. Time is often an overlooked resource that many organizations do not factor during operations policy formulation. Therefore, this topic will be vital in unveiling how time management has been underrated in healthcare organizations and how time management strategies have bridged this gap.

This paper will focus on time management in nursing practices and how mismanagement of time has affected nursing care and the nurses’ efficiency. Healthcare organizations and nurses’ leaders have a duty to manage time to optimize performance and guarantee smooth workflow. However, nurses are often overworked and poorly managed in healthcare organizations where time is underrated and mismanaged. Some nurses choose to work beyond their allocated shifts for extra income, compromising their fitness to deliver quality and safe patient care. Also, nurses experience overlapping schedules and inconsiderate allocation of shifts that disregard the nurses’ physical and psychological welfare.

Effective time management is critical in the healthcare environment since it promotes the nurses' mental and physical health and consequently improves their efficiency in patient care and assigned tasks. Time management is a fundamental aspect of resource management in healthcare organizations that addresses the value of the workforce (Pitre et al., 2018). Besides, effective time management is a positive organizational behavior strategy as nurses are emotionally and mentally stable after resting and revitalizing from their duties. Lastly, with effective time management in nursing practices, there is a surety that nurses will be more helpful to the doctors and the patients during treatment and monitoring.

Research 

The aspect of time management in nursing practice is anecdotal since different healthcare organizations develop distinct strategies for setting time-related objectives and proving that time has been utilized as planned. However, researchers have weighed different time management strategies in nursing and upheld nurses-centered approaches since time management is more personal than organizational. Often, nurses and healthcare organizations are required to apply a combination of time management strategies for an optimal experience. Selecting the appropriate strategy or a combination of strategies is determined by the situation in the healthcare organization or one that inconveniences the nurses on duty. According to Waterworth (2003), the most efficient time management strategies in nursing practice are prioritization, routinization, and self-leadership.

Routinization is a time management strategy where nurses follow a routine that grows to become an order of activities or a work plan. Waterworth (2003) argues that the routinization strategy synchronizes individual habits to maintain orderly operations in healthcare organizations. Routines are essential in time supervision for individual nurses, units, and the entire organization. Nurses' leaders can identify the routines that follow the organizational schedules and create expectations and time slots that the nurses should utilize to complete every task. Routinization addresses time wastage in nursing practices since it reduces the time spent thinking and planning the activities for each nurse (Rytterstrom et al., 2010). In activities where routinization is not prioritized as a main time management strategy, nurses take a lot of time thinking about what actions will be done and the order of performing the tasks. However, routinization creates a habitual way of responding to situations, thus saving time. Based on a study done by Pitre et al. (2018), approximately 21.4% of nurses experience challenges in effective time management due to lack of expected goals or lack of clarity in the assigned goals. Therefore, routinization creates and clarifies personal expectations that are in line with the organizational goals.

Furthermore, routinization addresses the time pressure that many nurses experience due to time mismanagement. Nurses usually work under pressured environments that are sometimes life-threatening. As Nayak (2018) lists, nurses are required to meet the expectations from patients, peers, and organizational leaders while still fulfilling the nursing activities assigned in their shifts. Time pressure can have devastating effects on nurses' ability to make quality decisions and act on the results to avail standard patient care. Due to time pressure, nurses can misinterpret nursing events and results that can increase the risk of poor services or medical mistakes (Goldsby et al., 2020). Time management problems in nursing practices occur due to the complexity and the randomness of the nursing assignments since patients come with distinct cases daily and at any time of the day (Goldsby et al., 2020). Nevertheless, Waterworth (2003) explains that routinization creates predictability and familiarity with the assigned tasks relevant to effective time management. Though temporal relocations can alter routinization, the management should synchronize the new schedules to achieve continuity in service delivery.

In addition, prioritization is a time management strategy that enables the nurses and the management to plan activities in urgent need. In nursing practice, prioritization is a prerequisite in performance optimization since the nurses have the freedom to make decisions on what is more important and what requires which nursing actions (Waterworth, 2003). Identifying what is urgent is a factor in promoting high productivity and time investment returns since working for many hours does not always translate into increased productivity (Goldsby et al., 2020). Prioritization creates a structure where the organization and the nurses’ leaders can develop temporary order of work based on situations. Prioritization makes reference to the nurses' routines since it is common to have difficulty during schedule restructuring and relocations. Prioritizing is an integral part of routine formation as the nurses are supposed to plan their activities and time to consider the urgency of every activity. Prioritization is a time management structure since it facilitates the allocation of time to each activity within the working hours assigned to each nurse. Though nurses should have the liberty to prioritize their duties, organizations and leaders should decide what should be done at what time to ensure accountability. Besides, nursing leadership is critical in determining priorities in patient care since it includes delegation of what workers will perform what work. An organization should enable horizontal coordination to ascertain that specialists are assigned to the most critical duties to minimize the risks and guarantee timely performance.

Prioritization addresses time wastage, where nurses allocate more time to unnecessary activities and tasks that can be performed later. Also, priorities minimize procrastination that adversely lowers the quality of service delivered since the functions are performed late or in a hurry. According to a survey done by Pitre et al. (2018), more than 42.9% and 21.4% of nurses identified competing priorities and procrastination as the primary barriers to effective time management in nursing care. Some nurses tend to prioritize personal engagements to official duties, thus lowering availability and efficiency of service. Therefore, organizations should establish structures that influence how the nurses set and utilize their priorities in the workplace. Time wastage and misappropriation is the primary cause of anxiety and depression when nurses experience scarcity of time to complete obligatory duties. Goldsby et al. (2020) contend that high levels of stress constrain one's working memory and critically inhibit the psychological resources to complete a task, and ultimately low the individual's effectiveness. Therefore, prioritization is crucial in addressing anxiety due to time mismanagement since it enhances equitable allocation of time to every activity.

Besides, self-leadership is a time management strategy that aims to provide adequate training to nurses to perform their roles better under minimal or no supervision. According to Goldsby et al. (2020), self-management is based on the social cognitive theory that states that people can be trained to control their thinking, how they behave, and their environment to develop a better workspace that can improve results. Self-leadership is a time management strategy since it helps nurses control what they do, who they are in contact with, and the manner in which they lead themselves regarding the organizational objectives and goals. The management in healthcare organizations has the mandate to promote self-leadership among the nurses through structures such as consultative leadership and collaborations. Allocation of duties develops accountability and a sense of responsibility even though there is minimal supervision. Self-leadership can include positive behavior, natural rewards, and positive thoughts (Goldsby et al., 2020). Self-leadership trait ensures that the nurses manage their time effectively to perform their duties at the right time and in the proper manner.

Positive behaviors in self-leadership include self-observation, setting goals, personal rewards, and personal punishment. Self-observation is where nurses develop the awareness of why they perform specific duties. On the other hand, self-goal setting is when nurses set and accomplish individual goals that gradually improve individual performance (Goldsby et al., 2020). Self-reward and punishment occur when nurses reward themselves for meeting their goals or reframe failures to identify why the plans were not met. Positive behavior is the core of effective time management since the management cannot initiate strict follow-up of the nurses’ activities.

The natural reward aspect of self-leadership establishes determination and competence in nursing practice and hence achieves effective time management. Natural reward helps the nurses to identify positive features of an activity that give satisfaction after completion. Also, the natural reward characteristic enables the nurses to pay little attention to the ungratifying attributes of nursing practices and focus on the more significant objective (Goldsby et al., 2020). Therefore, the natural reward trait maintains the nurses' focus, thus minimizing time wastage and mismanagement. Moreover, the positive thoughts feature of self-leadership changes the nurses' perception of situations in the healthcare organization. Positive thought strengthens the natural reward trait and promotes self-evaluation and optimal performance. Moreover, positive thinking helps to achieve the goal of effective time management of creating value for every investment on time.

In conclusion, effective time management is the core of the organizational performance and ultimate success. Time management in nursing is underrated regardless of it being the determinant in the effectiveness of patient care and healthcare worker's effectiveness. Strategies such as routinization, prioritization, and self-leadership have been cited in many pieces of research as ideal methods of achieving effective time management in healthcare organizations. Routinization involves creating routines and patterns that nurses can use to address daily situations in healthcare organizations. Routines save time since they help the nurses to quickly determine the activities they should be involved in during their shifts and how the tasks should be performed. On the other hand, prioritization arranges activities in order of urgency and needs to ensure that all activities are assigned equitable time and personnel without procrastination or time wastage. Furthermore, prioritization minimizes work-related stress and anxiety due to the inability to complete tasks within a limited time. Lastly, self-leadership ensures that the nurses can perform tasks efficiently without strict supervision or organizational motivation. Self-leadership includes positive behaviors, natural rewards, and positive thoughts that nurture determination and accountability in nurses and hence achieve the value objective of time management.

Personal Learning Experiences 

The research on effective time management regarding nursing practices has taught me the centrality of individual accountability for nurses during shifts and general patient care. Effective time management can be enhanced by organizational leadership but can only be implemented by the individual nurses or teams. After assessing my level of accountability on time management, I identified some time-wasting activities such as reading clinical magazines during office hours limiting my effectiveness in the workplace. Also, this research has clarified the importance of creating routines as previously, I thought of routines as activities that cause boredom and underperformance. I have identified routinization as my aim within the next two months since I waste a lot of time catching up with previous tasks even though I performed them within a short time.

These time management strategies would be critical in my facility since the organization has been experiencing low individual performances that have made it challenging to achieve the organizational goals and withstand the changing consumer demands. My facility uses the hierarchical structure of governance, and therefore, the management lacks accountability for all employees. Therefore, routinization and self-leadership would be necessary for optimizing individual performances in situations where the leadership cannot hold each employee accountable for specific results. Routinization would create a culture where all employees understand their duties and expectations. At the same time, self-leadership would motivate all employees to work effectively regardless of not being actively involved in the organization's management. On the other hand, prioritization will help correct the frequent incidences where the employees engage in long-term activities at the expense of short-term needs. Also, prioritization will help align all individual ambitions and objectives to the organizational goals since personal targets hinder the achievement of corporate targets if they affect the employees' effectiveness on the assigned tasks.

References 

Goldsby, E., Goldsby, M., Neck, C. B., & Neck, C. P. (2020). Under pressure: time management, self-leadership, and the nurse manager. Administrative Sciences , 10 (3), 38. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci10030038 

Nayak, S, G. (2018). Time management in nursing –hour of need. International Journal of Caring Sciences , 11 (3), 1997–2000.

Pitre, C., Pettit, K., Ladd, L., Chisholm, C., & Welch, J. L. (2018). Physician time management. MedEdPORTAL , 14 (1). https://doi.org/10.15766/mep_2374-8265.10681 

Rytterström, P., Unosson, M., & Arman, M. (2010). The significance of routines in nursing practice. Journal of Clinical Nursing , 20 (23–24), 3513–3522. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2702.2010.03522.x 

Waterworth, S. (2003). Time management strategies in nursing practice. Journal of Advanced Nursing , 43 (5), 432–440. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2648.2003.02740.x