Abstract
A Self-Care Medication Program was developed in an industrial plant in an effort to decrease the nursing workload from non-occupational related visits. Minimal health education was provided by having self-help books available, but the reading of this material was not mandatory prior to an employee utilizing the program.
Data were collected over a 33-month period and then evaluated using incident rates which allows for a comparison from one year to another. The incident rate (I.R.) for a specific type of visit was the number of visits (Incidence=I) for each 100 employees in a one-year time period, divided by the total number of hours worked.
The Self-Care Medication Program had one complicated outcome in 23,250 visits. The self-care visits were inversely related to non-occupational visits and as the self-care visits increased, there was a reduction in the non-occupational visits by 65%. For each self-care visit there was a 16.5-minute savings. A self-care visit averaged 0.6 minutes while the one-to-one contact with the nurse and waiting time totaled 17.1 minutes. The average length of time for the one-to-one visit with the nurse totaled 10 minutes. This industrial setting, with only 2200 employees had an annualized savings of 2321 lost production time hours with an additional savings of 1406 nurse treatment hours.
The Self-Care Medication Program appears to be a safe, cost avoidance manpower saver that has the capability of reducing healthcare provider headcount or freeing up the time for other purposes. It supports those theories which espouse that people can provide for themselves and do it safely when treating minor symptomatic health problems such as colds, stomach upset, headache and sore throats. It appears to be a viable alternative healthcare method capable of saving significant amounts of money in terms of time saved.