The Productive Ward programme to provide high quality care: findings from a scoping review

Abstract

The Productive Ward: Releasing Time to CareTM is a ward processes- and environments- improvement program intended to help nurses to spend more time on patient care, thus promoting patient safety. To define the state-of-science in research on the Productive Ward (PW) program, the set of outcomes documented to date, as well as the factors facilitating or hindering its implementation in practice. A scoping review based on the framework proposed by Levac et al. in 2010, further refined by the Joanna Briggs Institute in 2017, was performed on 2021. Methods and findings have been reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses - Scoping Reviews statement. 11 studies have been published from 2014 to 2021, mainly in Europe and England. According to the findings, the PW program has an impact on nurses, patients and the organization. Factors facilitating the PW programme implementation rely on engaging communication, the leadership, the organizational and the managerial support, the additional human and financial resources as well as on the feature of the context and its culture. Resistance to change is the most investigated barrier of PW implementation. Although limited, the evidence suggests that the PW experiences are positive. Factors facilitating and hindering the implementation suggest a map of possible elements to consider before and during the implementation process.