Developing the Nursing Team at St. Luke's, Chicago

Abstract

The major problem was how to give good nursing care to patients with a limited number of professional nurses and students, and an increased number of auxiliary personnel (see Figure 1). The head nurse and assistant head nurse felt that the auxiliary personnel's time was not being properly utilized. During certain hours of the day, for example, the nurses were extremely rushed and unable to give the patients adequate care, while the nurse's aides did not have enough work to keep them busy or happy. The specific duties which the aides were allowed to perform were determined by nursing service policy established by the nursing school faculty but we doubted that our assignments gave them the opportunity to do as much as the policies permitted. It was also felt that much of the ward maids' time was being misused, and that this group of workers could contribute far more to the welfare of the patients. The second problem was an educational one. Many students were not learning to give expert nursing care because their assignments were too heavy. A student might, for example, be asked