International researchers present at INESC TEC in order to debate nursing care rationing

International researchers present at INESC TEC in order to debate nursing care rationing

INESC TEC welcomed several international researchers in order to debate how to avoid nursing care rationing.

07th December 2018

The debates took place under the RANCARE project that was coordinated by the Cyprus University of Technology and which has INESC TEC as one of his partners. INESC TEC was represented in this debate by the senior researcher of the Centre for Industrial Engineering and Management (CEGI), Mário Amorim Lopes.

But what does nursing care rationing mean? Nursing care rationing is defined as the withholding or failure to carry out nursing measures on patients due to lack of resources. The main causes of this phenomenon are the shortage of staff, the complexity of care, the inadequate material resources and team communication issues. The results are mostly reflected in the lower quality of the service and the patient satisfaction, adverse events such as patient falls, medication errors, increased infections and, as a consequence, increased mortality. These results are also extended to the nursing community, thus reflecting in low job satisfaction, absenteeism and intention to leave.

With this purpose in mind, RANCARE project intends to facilitate the debate on the conceptualisation of the nursing care rationing and the methodological challenges in researching and monitoring the phenomenon, thus developing and evaluating intervention methods.

It is also intended for the debate to be a facilitator for all the stakeholders involved in the process, in order to develop a responsive scientific agenda that identifies challenges and innovative, cost-effective and patient-centred solutions associated with rationing.

The project will enable an exchange of experience and expertise for both research and clinical practices at a European and also at an international level. RANCARE will also allow to foster research and policy synergies by drawing out the implications of nursing care rationing across countries and to identify innovative delivery models and strategies with an overall goal of addressing patient needs.

The researcher mentioned in this news piece is associated with INESC TEC.