Business intelligence dashboards facilitating nursing management practices: An Australian local health district qualitative study

Abstract

Objective: To reflect upon the potential of digital processing of Business Intelligence (BI) to facilitate nurse management practices across operational, financial and workforce areas. That is, beyond the usual safety and quality monitoring and improvement.

Background: Nurse managers are responsible for nursing service delivery within their unit/division/directorate(s), taking a crucial role in the accountability of the functioning of the health system. While use of nursing dashboards as BI supports safety and quality nursing management practices, there is a need to understand BI’s potential to enable nursing practices to broader nursing management, such as financial and workforce areas.

Study design and methods: This study followed the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ) checklist. In this qualitative research, in August 2022, four nurse (unit) managers and two nurse leaders, with years of work experience ranging between 2 and 18 years, participated in one-on-one semi-structured interviews. Interview participants shared their experience of BI implementation in operational, financial, and workforce areas of nursing management. The participants were purposively selected from the medical and surgery units in two hospitals: a major metropolitan hospital and another, a principal tertiary referral hospital.

Results: Thematic analysis, following an inductive analysis of the interview data, generated two overarching themes. One, BI contributing to enabling of nursing management and two, BI requiring continuous improvement.

Discussion: Nursing dashboard implementation as BI in operations, finance and workforce areas provided efficient and timely access to consolidated, visually meaningful, and relevant data. The dashboard showed potential for supporting nursing management practices, such as proactive data analysis, data-informed work conversations with staff, and better decision-making in areas such as budgeting, staffing and patient flow management. However, the implementation of BI needs to be a continuous improvement process, with greater focus on educating and collaborating with end-users. The study implies nursing dashboards should be implemented with metrics of broader nursing management practices in alignment with the needs of the end-users and the relevant health system.

Conclusion: There is a case for using BI in work areas beyond safety and quality to support nurses in broader nursing management practices. Future studies exploring nurses’ long-term experiences with BI and co-designing with end-users of BI would be beneficial to facilitating nursing management practices.