The role of IT in facilitating the centralised co-ordination of agency and bank nursing within an acute hospital.

Abstract

Healthcare organisations have to operate within finite resources. It is widely acknowledged that supplementary agency and bank nurses are needed to fill vacant hospital shifts that cannot be filled by permanent staff. In Ireland a project was initiated in the main Dublin Academic Teaching Hospitals, to centralise the coordination of all Bank and Agency activity within each individual institution. This paper outlines the necessity for such a move, and describes the steps one hospital has taken in developing and implementing an electronic Nursing Bank Management System.