By Richard Johnstone | 22 April 2013
The amount of time nurses spend on paperwork has more than doubled in the past five years and is preventing them from caring for patients, the Royal College of Nursing has warned.
A survey of 6,000 RCN members, published yesterday, indicates that a total of 2.5 million hours a week are now spent on non-essential administration and clerical tasks. This is up from 1 million hours calculated from the same poll in 2008.
The vast majority of nurses surveyed (81%) said that having to complete non-essential paperwork prevented them from providing direct patient care.
More than a quarter (27%) said their workplace did not have a ward clerk or administrative assistant who helped with clerical duties. However, 61% of those who did have such help said it meant they were able to spend more time with patients.
RCN general secretary Peter Carter said the figures showed that a ‘shocking amount of a nurse’s time is being wasted on unnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy’. The time taken up by paperwork was now around 17% of the total hours worked by nurses in the NHS across the UK, the RCN concluded.
Carter said that although some paperwork was essential, patients wanted nurses by their bedside, not ticking boxes.
He added that the current review of NHS bureaucracy, led by NHS Confederation chief executive Mike Farrar, was welcome, but action must be taken when it is complete. The review was commissioned by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt in February.
Responding to the RCN’s survey, Farrar said it illustrated the need for ‘a smarter system of information, not a bigger one’.
He added: ‘We fully recognise the story that the RCN's survey tells. It is entirely consistent with the picture that has emerged during the first phase of our work on tackling the burden of bureaucracy in the NHS.
‘More than four out of ten NHS clinicians, managers and board members have told us they spend between one and three hours of their working day personally collecting and recording information. Three-quarters told us that certain information collected for regulators or for national requirements was irrelevant. It is clear we need to do more to free staff from the shackles of unnecessary form filling and create more time to spend on patient care.’
Over the coming months, the confederation will be talking to staff, patients and national bodies about how best to tackle the problem, ahead of a final report and recommendations being published in September, Farrar said. ‘These views will be integral to helping us identify what bits of bureaucracy are slowing staff down and how we can deliver significant improvements rather than just tinkering around the edges.’
