Prinicpal Investigator: Christina Saville

Team: Paul Meredith, University of Southampton

Chiara Dall'Ora, University of Southampton

Tom Weeks, Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust

Sue Wierzbicki, Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust

Peter Griffiths, University of Southampton

Start Date: 1 September 2023

End Date: 30 September 2024

Background

Having enough nurses to care for patients on hospital wards is critical for patient safety, but it is difficult to plan for varying numbers of patients and unknown trajectories of deterioration and recovery.  Tools for assessing patients’ needs to help with staff planning are an extra nursing task, thus adding further to workload. We do not know whether ward-level demand could be accurately predicted using existing assessments and data that is already recorded electronically.

The overall aim of the project is to explore the feasibility of predicting acuity/dependency-based workload measures, as assessed by nurses, from routinely collected information in patients’ electronic health records. 

The objectives are to

A.      review suitability of alternative predictive techniques

B.      develop real-time predictive algorithms for estimating ward acuity/dependency workload as defined by the Safer Nursing Care Tool at the start of a day or shift

C.       fit models including variables available retrospectively to see whether predictions can be further improved for use in longer term planning