Nurses' perceptions of working according to standardized care plans: a questionnaire study.

Aims: The aim of this study was to investigate nurses' perceptions of working according to standardized care plans (SCPs), regarding usability, documentation, quality of care and the implementation process.

Background: Administrative work is an extensive part of nursing practice which leads to decreased time for the near patient-related care. In addition, the number of very sick patients with short hospital stays has increased. This places new demands on healthcare teams to guarantee a high quality of care. For this reason development and use of standardized care plans has increased in Sweden during recent years.

Method: This was a cross-sectional survey and 116 registered nurses who had experience of working according SCPs answered a questionnaire with the option of providing written comments.

Result: The nurses reported that the use of SCPs facilitated their daily work, especially for new employees and worked well as a checklist ensuring the quality of care. The documentation was experienced as easy, less time consuming with less redundant information. The implementation process of SCPs was reported as satisfactory but a majority reported that they were not involved in the development of the SCP. However, even though 85.5% reported a positive attitude towards working according to an SCP, it was also sometimes experienced as inflexible.

Conclusion: The nurses had overall positive perceptions of working according to an SCP mainly in terms of usability, documentation and quality of care. The implementation process was not optimal and it was doubtful whether the SCP rendered any positive side effects.