NUR 307 Module 3 Project One Technology Proposal Example

Project One: Where Is the Pump? A Proposal for Real-Time Location Tracking of Infusion Pumps on 4 West

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

NUR 307: Exploring Information Technology for Professional Practice

Project One

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.

Project One: Where Is the Pump? A Proposal for Real-Time Location Tracking of Infusion Pumps on 4 West

On 4 West, a composite medical-surgical unit with 32 beds, the most common question at the start of an admission is not about the patient; it is about the pump. Nurses search clean utility rooms, patient rooms and neighboring units for an available infusion pump, and some keep one tucked away for their next patient. This proposal describes that problem, evaluates a real-time location system as a solution and recommends a way forward. It argues that location tracking can return time to nursing care, but only if it is deployed for equipment rather than staff, owned by the department that manages equipment and measured against the time it is meant to save.

The Problem

A two-week audit on 4 West, conducted by the unit's practice council, asked nurses to log each time they searched for a pump. Nurses recorded 146 searches over 14 days, with a median search time of 9 minutes and a range of 2 to 40 minutes. In 23 searches, a nurse borrowed a pump from another unit, and on four occasions a scheduled antibiotic or blood product was started more than 30 minutes late because no pump could be found. During the same period, biomedical engineering counted 11 pumps from 4 West sitting in other units and 6 in the soiled utility room waiting to be cleaned. These figures are composites for this example, but they reflect a problem many units describe.

The time matters because nursing time is scarce and already dominated by indirect work. Hendrich et al. (2008) followed 767 nurses across 36 medical-surgical units and found that documentation, medication administration and care coordination accounted for most of nursing practice time, while only 7.2% of practice time went to patient assessment and reading vital signs. Minutes spent hunting for equipment come out of that small share or add to the delays nurses already work around.

The Technology

A real-time location system uses tags attached to equipment and a network of sensors in the building to show where each tagged item is on a map, usually in a web dashboard or phone app. Kamel Boulos and Berry (2012) describe several technologies used indoors, including radio frequency, infrared, ultrasound and Wi-Fi based systems, and stress that the key to success is matching the technology to the specific problem. For finding pumps, room-level accuracy is enough; for tracking patient flow or staff contacts, systems need finer precision and raise different questions. Tags can also show whether a pump is clean or dirty when paired with a status button or docking station, which helps nurses find a pump that is ready to use.

What the Evidence Shows

The evidence is more cautious than vendor materials. Fisher and Monahan (2012) studied 23 U.S. hospitals that had implemented location systems, observing the systems in use and conducting 80 interviews. They found that most systems had substandard functionality and that hospitals faced serious obstacles from their own buildings and organizational structures. Their conclusion was that the best current use was asset tracking, but that it required whole-hospital deployment and centralized control, preferably by materials management or biomedical engineering. Kamel Boulos and Berry (2012) similarly warn that a poor match between technology and application leads to failure or disappointing results.

Two practical lessons follow. A system limited to one unit will lose track of pumps as soon as they leave it, which is exactly the problem 4 West has. And a system owned by nursing alone will struggle to maintain tags, batteries and sensors across the building.

Privacy, Workflow and Risks

Location systems can track people as well as objects, and staff tracking raises real concerns about surveillance and trust. This proposal limits the system to equipment. No badges will be issued to nurses, and location data will not be used to measure staff performance. Patient privacy is not directly affected, since pumps are tracked by device and room, not by patient, though room location should still be treated as operational data with limited access. Workflow risks include tags that fall off during cleaning, dead batteries, and nurses who stop trusting the map after a few failed searches. Cost includes tags, sensors, software licenses and staff time for maintenance.

Recommendation

The unit should not buy a system of its own. Instead, the practice council should ask biomedical engineering to lead a six-month asset-only pilot covering all infusion pumps in the medical-surgical tower, with 4 West as the primary evaluation unit. Biomedical engineering would own tags, sensors and maintenance; environmental services would press a clean-status button after cleaning; nurses would use the dashboard on unit computers and phones. The pilot should be judged by the measures that define the problem: search frequency and time, delayed starts due to missing pumps, pumps found in other units and nurse satisfaction with the system. Project Two will develop the implementation and evaluation plan in detail.

Alternatives Considered

Two low-technology alternatives were considered. A par-level system, with a fixed number of clean pumps restocked in each unit's clean room every shift, would reduce searching without new equipment, and it should be tried alongside the pilot. Stricter return rules for borrowed pumps would help but depend on busy staff remembering. Neither addresses pumps lost in soiled utility rooms or other buildings, which location data can find in minutes. A third option, buying more pumps, was rejected: the audit suggests the unit does not have too few pumps but too little knowledge of where its pumps are, and adding inventory would raise costs while leaving the same pattern of loss in place.

Conclusion

Nurses on 4 West lose time and patients lose timely treatment because pumps cannot be found. A real-time location system can help, but the evidence shows it works only when it is matched to the task, deployed beyond one unit and owned by the department that manages equipment. An asset-only pilot, led by biomedical engineering and measured against nursing time, is the responsible way to find out whether the technology earns its cost.

References

Fisher, J. A., & Monahan, T. (2012). Evaluation of real-time location systems in their hospital contexts. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 81(10), 705-712. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2012.07.001

Hendrich, A., Chow, M. P., Skierczynski, B. A., & Lu, Z. (2008). A 36-hospital time and motion study: How do medical-surgical nurses spend their time? The Permanente Journal, 12(3), 25-34. https://doi.org/10.7812/TPP/08-021

Kamel Boulos, M. N., & Berry, G. (2012). Real-time locating systems (RTLS) in healthcare: A condensed primer. International Journal of Health Geographics, 11, Article 25. https://doi.org/10.1186/1476-072X-11-25