Nursing workload measurement as management information

Abstract Goal of the study presented in this paper was to balance the supply and demand of nursing care at nursing units within general hospitals. A ‘management control framework’ is developed, containing the relevant decision levels, the goal variable and the information needed to control the balance between supply and demand. A nursing workload measurement instrument is introduced, and an experiment is set up to test the performance of the framework and the measurement system in the daily practice of eight nursing units in two hospitals, during 20 consecutive weeks. Intervention has taken place in both the staffing and patient planning processes. The effects upon the goal variable has been measured. The variation coefficient of the work pressure is used as an indicator for the stability of the balance. The results of the experiment are presented.