Good practices to reduce unfinished nursing care: An integrative review

Abstract

Aim: To identify evidence of good practice interventions aimed at reducing unfinished nursing care in the hospital context.

Background: Unfinished nursing care is a common problem related to nursing practice, essentially due to time scarcity. There is not much research on how to deal with it and on how to develop good practices that can mitigate the unfinished nursing care.

Evaluation: This study is an integrative review of the literature. After searching databases, we selected seven articles that met the inclusion criteria.

Key issues: To mitigate unfinished nursing care, the following good practices were identified: adequacy of human resources, nurse-to-patient ratio and workload distribution; improvement of the working environment with increased teamwork; and effective communication among all health professionals.

Conclusion: An adequate number of nurses can ensure the timely provision of care and mitigate unfinished nursing care. Efficient communication between the multi-professional team, as well as recognition of professional merit, personal and organisational accountability, also contributes to mitigate unfinished nursing care.

Implications for nursing management: Health organisations should staff their units adequately and ensure a well-balanced workload distribution, and promote healthy work environments that foster personal accountability, adequate communication between all professionals and recognition of professional merit.

Keywords: hospital; missed nursing care; patient safety; unfinished nursing care.