The research article was about creating a rehab matrix for nurses on inpatient rehab facility. The rehab matrix is to help assign patients to nurses equally using the acuity variables. The aim of the research is to provide quality care to patients. Focus groups consisting of registered nurses and patient care assistants were selected to identify medical interventions that increase the effort of nursing care at an inpatient rehabilitation facility. Thirteen acuity variables were included in the Rehab matrix patient assignment grid. Some of the acuity variables identified include in and out catheterization, bowel and bladder incontinence, physical restraint or personal sitter, all types of isolation, percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy, tracheostomy, major dressing change taking more than 30 minutes to complete, 2-person assist with bed mobility, one to one feeding and high fall risk patients. The Rehab matrix patient assignment grid was then divided as follows: High acuity patients with greater than 6 variables were coded red, medium acuity patients with 3 to 5 variables were coded yellow and low acuity patients with less than 3 variables were coded green (Ifejika et al., 2019).
Reference:
Ifejika, N. L., Okpala, M. L., Moser, H. A., Watkins, J. N., & Noser, E. A. (2019). Rehab Matrix: Content validity of a nursing-led patient assisgnmemt algorithm. Retrieved June 28, 2020, from https://go-gale-com.ezproxy.fhsu.edu/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=klnb_fhsuniv&id=GALE%7CA573714453&v=2.1&it=r
This a great idea! I haven’t worked on an inpatient unit for 10 years because I have been working at an ambulatory infusion center. But I can remember when I worked Med/Surg that some of the assignments were so unfair. It seemed like those of us that were stronger nurses had the worst assignment. Just because we could do the work didn’t mean we should have the hardest assignment. I think having a rehab matrix would make it more fair. Having the patient’s variables listed out would make it easier to make the assignment more fairly than not having it. I was the charge nurse most of the time and you may not know what all every patient has going on. You try to be fair but without knowing all their variable you can’t be completely fair. I love this idea!
I agree it’s a good idea to have a rehab matrix when assigning patients to nurses. It can be tough for charge nurses to make assignment and be fair to everyone. This type of rehab matrix will really help the charge nurses to be fair when assigning patients to nurses.
I am a case manager in an inpatient rehab unit and a plan like that would be very helpful in determining assignments, patient load and acuity. Obviously staffing needs change if a unit would have a handful of very high acuity patients compared with a high number of very low acuity patients that require little assistance. Topics like this are important to be explored by administration, managers and floor nurses to help balance acuity and staffing.
Inpatient rehab now has a lot of high acuity patients that an acuity matrix will be very helpful in making assignment for the nurses. At my old working place, all the nurses used to have six patients each and the assignment would be made based on the room numbers. Some nurses would end up having heavy assignment while some nurses would have light assignment and when a nurse with a light assignment is not coming back the following day, the other nurses would be asking the charge nurse to give them that group. A lot of nurses used to complain about their assignment at that time and I believe using this type of acuity matrix would have helped a lot in assigning patients to the nurses fairly.