‘Barcodes will not tackle the underlying problems’

And given that ours is a reflective profession, might we not ask who is failing to put things away properly? And what might we do about this?

We could give on-the-spot fines, or maybe the NMC could lumber into action once more and issue a directive or put another
bit on the end of the code of conduct, something like ‘and put things away when you’ve finished with them thank you’.

The psychology of looking for lost things is pretty straightforward. Take, for example, my lost hat. I have others but I like this one as it goes nicely with my coat. I look for it and cannot find it.

What happens? I get irritated and am sarcastic to the cat. He doesn’t get it. Logic tells me that I should trace my movements and not look in places where I have never been with the hat. The kitchen, for example. Or Peru. So I retrace my steps. No hat.

I decide that the lack of hat in all the obvious places means something unobvious must have happened. I may have left it at a meeting, dropped it, or put it on someone else’s head by mistake. I thus apply a range of ‘possible if unlikely scenarios’ to the hat search. No hat. So I tire of logic and go to Peru.

You see, this is what happens. The need to look for things annoys us, makes us irritated and irrational and we may even wonder: ‘I trained for three years to spend an hour every day looking for dressing packs?’ And that is not good for the soul.

The solution being proposed involves barcoding everything so that equipment, and presumably staff, can be tracked by computer. Good idea. Or we could just tell everyone to put stuff back where they found it. Might be cheaper.

An RCN spokesperson said in response to the survey: ‘The first priority for any nurse is spending time with patients delivering high-quality care.’ And one wonders if that is after they have done the handover, the ward round, the medication, the care planning, the phone calling and any miscellaneous baking.

Now, I wholly agree with the RCN spokesperson but it seems that many nurses are finding that a lot of activities fill their day and stop them ‘spending time with patients delivering high-quality care’.

We can barcode all we want but the problem of lost things is essentially another illustration of the cluttering up of a working day that is diluting the nursing role and wasting nurses’ time.

Want to read more of Mark Radcliffe’s opinions? Just click on the more by this author link at the top of the page.

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