ArticleDigital health
Measuring the impact of digitisation on NHS nurses' time and morale: A time and motion study.
Article in Digital health. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Healing the Healers: Fifty Years of Global Challenges and Progress in Nurse Psychological Wellbeing.Journal of advanced nursing · 2026Article
- Nanostructured electrode materials and flexible-substrate engineering for wearable multi-analyte biosensors in diabetes monitoring and personalized care: a comprehensive review.Journal of materials science. Materials in medicine · 2026Review
- Digitally dedicated nurses: a nationwide cross-sectional study of associated career and digital factors in the workplace.BMC health services research · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: Despite the benefits of digital transformation, many healthcare organisations still rely on manual, traditional processes to transfer clinical images and videos to electronic patient records (EPRs), consuming valuable nurse-patient-facing time. Our study aimed to outline tasks performed by nurses to traditionally transfer clinical images and videos to EPRs, assess the impact on nurses' time and efficiency cost, and report on nurse experiences when transitioning to a digitised process. Methods: Observations spanned two one-week periods in the ENT outpatient department of Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, using direct observational time and predetermined motion time system analysis to map nurses' tasks pre-and post-implementation of a Medical Video Recorder and Centralised Medical Content Management. Two staff experience surveys were conducted, and data was aggregated to evaluate the impact of digitisation. Results: Nurses traditionally followed two processes to transfer clinical images and video to EPRs. Digitisation saved 43 seconds per endoscopy (a 10% efficiency gain) compared to Process 1, in which nurses print, attach, scan, and digitise images off-site to EPRs, and 3 minutes and 8 seconds (a 33% efficiency gain) compared to Process 2, where urgent content is recorded on an iPad and transferred to EPRs. Digitising could save nurses 26 working days annually by reducing non-patient-facing tasks in the ENT department, leading to an annual time efficiency cost-saving of £6780. Furthermore, 75% of nurses reported significantly improved morale, 63% strongly agreed that digitisation improved confidence in the accuracy of patient details, and all paper processes were eliminated. Conclusion: Our findings highlight the inefficiency of traditional methods in transferring images and videos to EPRs. Digital transformation could enhance nursing efficiency and morale, improving care quality. Future studies should evaluate the effectiveness of Medical Video Recorders and Centralised Medical Content Management in other departments.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.