Background: Matching nursing shift assignment to patients' acuity scores may promote a more equitable and effective workload balance, increasing nurses' satisfaction, and improving quality of care (QoC).
Purpose: This article explores nurses' perspectives about the nursing assignment process after implementing a project to promote an improved nursing assignment process in medical/surgical wards by using Perroca patient acuity tool (PAT).
Design: Qualitative approach was used with two focus group discussions including a total of 13 participants, selected by purposive sampling.
Results: Four main themes were generated from the data. The main study themes were: assignment based on acuity score, challenges and limitation, change journey and participants' suggestions, and recommendations for improving the assignment process.
Conclusions: Implementing the tool will yield better nursing assignments; better nursing and patient outcomes and improve QoC.
Keywords: Nurses' satisfaction; Nursing assignment; Nursing workload; Patient acuity tools; Patient classification systems.
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