Time to care, a licensed programme in the United Kingdom, would be sponsored by the Health Ministry to be implemented in New Zealand. The programme involves organizing the inventory being used in hospitals so that nurses are able to devote more time to patients rather than look for things.

There are nine health boards that are involved in the programme to date. Even Tony Ryall, Health Minister expressed his fondness for the project and appreciated the change that has been brought around by the initiative.

Mr. Tony Ryall further announced in the parliament that there were 2,500 nurses involved under the programme. He also added that in some of the cases, nurses were able to increase the time devoted to patient care by twice the time they devoted earlier.

Paul Cocks, Manager, MidCentral Health Programme informed that the programme was about nurses spending more time with patients. Not that the work needs to be done with fewer nurses. He added that patients who are taken care of properly and are kept under proper medical supervision tend to recover faster.

Hospital wards have been found to be very confusing places and the workload of nurses increases when they have to look for things up and down the ward. The programme has dealt with this very problem so that nurses don’t get irritated by the extra load of unnecessary work.