Nursing Satisfaction | Improve Nursing Satisfaction with Telepharmacy

Nurses play a central role in smooth hospital operations. Between patient care and administrative duties, they must handle a wide range of responsibilities to ensure positive patient outcomes and satisfaction.  What’s more, the link between nurses and pharmacists is a central component of patient care. Improving the consistency of this workflow can result in:

• Higher nursing satisfaction
• Lower turnover rates for all staff (and especially nurses)
• Improve HCAHPS ratings

Supporting your nursing staff with efficient pharmacy operations is critical to improving nursing satisfaction and, in turn, improving patient care and hospital safety.

The link between nurses and pharmacists is a central component of patient care.

The Problem: Limited Pharmacy Resources

It’s impossible to anticipate or staff for every peak and valley in pharmacy demand.  Common causes of pharmacy backups and slow turnarounds include:

• Lack of 24/7 coverage
• Callouts, vacation, or personal leave
• Regular peak hours
• Unusual or emergency surges

When the pharmacy gets backed up or is unavailable, the burden largely falls on the nursing staff. Nurses are forced to do without pharmacist review and/or handle patient discomfort while medication orders are processed. This increases workplace stress and puts patient safety and satisfaction at risk. Long term, this higher stress inevitably increases nursing turn-over.

Limited pharmacy resources put pressure on nurses to take on additional job responsibilities.

Conversely, providing high-quality, 24-7 clinical pharmacy services with consistent rapid turnarounds significantly relieves stress on nursing staff and allows them to better deliver critical patient services.

According to a third-party study, hospitals saw a 10% increase in overall nursing satisfaction following the implementation of PipelineRX services.

It’s All Connected

A study published by The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing (OJIN) found that nursing satisfaction is directly linked to patient satisfaction and the quality of patient care.  Moreover, both patient satisfaction and quality of care impact HCAHPS ratings, which in turn correlate to hospital reimbursements.

Nursing satisfaction is linked to patient satisfaction and quality of patient care, which influences HCAHPS ratings and reimbursements.

Clearly, efficient pharmacy operations are crucial to improving nursing satisfaction and other hospital KPIs. Unfortunately, many healthcare organizations can’t justify the monetary resources necessary to extend pharmacy coverage to 24/7 operations or add additional on-site pharmacists. So what can be done?

The Solution: Extend Clinical Resources with Telepharmacy

What is Telepharmacy?

Telepharmacy allows you to easily and cost effectively support and/or extend pharmacy services by employing skilled pharmacists working from a remote location. It utilizes telecommunication tools to complete standard pharmacist tasks like:

• Medication order review and verification
• Intervention identification
• Clinical consultations
• Monitoring formulary compliance
• Enforcing drug use policies
• Patient counseling
• Dosing recommendations
• Medication reconciliation

While physical medication dispensing is handled on-location, performing these other tasks remotely can significantly improve workflow efficiency for nurses, allowing them to focus more on their primary responsibilities with fewer workflow disruptions.

Telepharmacy allows nurses to focus on their primary responsibilities with fewer workflow disruptions.

Why Telepharmacy?

By utilizing remote pharmacy operations, you can provide additional support for your nurses while improving nursing satisfaction.

• Improve Pharmacy Consistency: Utilizing telepharmacy allows for more consistent medication order turnaround times regardless of on-location pharmacy hours or sudden surges in orders. Medications are quickly reviewed, verified, and available for administration by nurses with consistent service levels.
• Extend Pharmacy Coverage: Telepharmacy allows healthcare organizations to cost-effectively add 24/7 coverage for off-hours with a per-order pricing model.
• Enhance Clinical Support: Staff rely on pharmacists for their clinical expertise in medication reconciliation, dosage calculations and administration, drug interactions and more. By having this support readily available over the phone or through online communications you can easily improve patient care.

PipelineRx: Simplify Pharmacy Operations Using Telepharmacy

Telepharmacy is the solution you need to support your nurses. Having access to the clinical resources and consistent pharmacy services improves hospital operations across the board resulting in increased nursing satisfaction, increased pharmacist job satisfaction, and increased patient satisfaction.

PipelineRx provides hospitals with a range of services and supporting software to improve operations through telepharmacy. We provide the flexibility you need whether your organization needs additional support during peak hours or you want to extend to 24/7 pharmacy coverage.

Interested in pricing? Have any questions?
Contact us to learn more about our services and software.