The significance of providing outpatient related services is essential to the patients’ recovery (Mardiah & Basri, 2013). However, recent studies have shown that some of the hospital practices hamper the process of outpatient service provision, making patients wait (Guttmann, Schull & Stukel, 2011). Although the Burjeel Hospital has been known for its relatively positive reputation in outpatient care (Kunt & khan, 2012), its staff could use a better schedule arrangement so that its patients should not wait much in order to receive the required services (Huang, 2013).
The negative effects, which long waiting time has on outpatients, are very intense (Piser & Prenntice, 2011); which is even more threatening, these effects may trigger recrudescence and the following regress in the treatment or intervention process. Even though the quality of the Burjeel Hospital services is stellar at present, spending impressive amounts of time waiting for their treatment may affect the patients greatly and, therefore, serve as a major impediment on their way to recovery (Mijailovic et al., 2014).
According to the recent reports, the outpatient services in the Burjeel Hospital have deteriorated slightly (Middle East monitor: Update from around the region, 2013, p. 7). The specified phenomenon can be interpreted as the effect of the improper time management strategy implemented by the hospital staff and the resulting necessity for patients to wait before receiving the needed services and medications (Mersieca, Cassar & Borg, 2014).
A closer look at the issue in question will reveal that time management and the precision of the information delivered from one nurse to another is often the key obstacle to providing the required services timely (Guerrero & Andrews, 2014). Therefore, corresponding strategies for data retrieval, storage, analysis and transfer, as well as the reconsideration of the currently accepted schedule, should be viewed as an option (Marcus et al., 2012).
One might argue that the patients’ behaviour also contributes to the increase in the waiting time (Aboukanda & Latif, 2014). True, in a range of cases, patients display the types of behaviour that impede the delivery of proficient services. However, it is the nurses’ duty to arrange the services provision process in such a way that the basic obstacles should be avoided.
Solute
Claiming that the issue is barely solvable would be wrong; in fact, several hospitals have provided efficient frameworks for handling the issue, the Six Sigma based one being the most promising one (Dinesh & Sanjeev, 2013). As a result of the above-mentioned approach application, the length of stay is expected to be reduced impressively among the patients (Stewart et al., 2013).
In addition to adopting the approach towards managing the Burjeel nurses’ time more efficiently, the idea of expanding and, therefore, hiring more staff members should be considered (Noppen, 2012). Judging by the current situation, which can be observed in the Burjeel Hospital, a better time management system, as well as a stronger emphasis on the information transfer process, will help solve the problem concerning the extra time spent by the hospital patients waiting for the healthcare services to be delivered (Aeenparast et al., 2013). In addition, hiring more staff can be viewed as an option for improving the current system of outpatient time management. Rescheduling the working hours of the staff and redistributing roles and responsibilities among nurses, one will be capable of handling the problem in question.
Reference List
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