title: Managing nursing assistants with a web-based system: an empirical investigation of the mixed-staff strategy.
abstract: Under the global shortage of Registered Nurses (RNs), some hospitals have integrated nursing assistants (NAs) into their teams to help to provide maximum quality care for acute patients, while keeping the hospital's staff-related costs down. However, the RNs may have to shoulder an increased burden of assigning and overseeing NAs. A web-based Nursing Assistants Management System (NAMS) was developed and evaluated for a case hospital in Taiwan to compare the processes of assigning and managing NAs before and after the NAMS intervention. The results showed that NAMS saved 80% of the time needed for manual operation and there were no more complains about NAs being slow in dealing with patients after the system intervention. The satisfaction levels of all NA managers and RNs were acceptable. Based on the research findings, the implication and limitations of this study were discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Information Management, National Chung Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan, Republic of China.
authors.forename: I-Chun
authors.initials: IC
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Ying-Hui
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Hou
authors.forename: Hui-Ling
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Tsui-Ping
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Chu
authors.forename: Ray-E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Chang
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D009718:Nurse Administrators; D009728:Nursing Assistants; D009738:Nursing Service, Hospital; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D010557:Personnel Administration, Hospital / Q000379:methods*; D010561:Personnel Staffing and Scheduling; D013624:Taiwan