The Productive Ward, as it is known, puts everyday ward activities under the microscope to help identify where time is being wasted.

This can be as simple as reorganising the medicine cabinet, but has already helped nurses at Pilgrim Hospital find another 60 minutes each every day for patients.

Chief nurse at the United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULHT), Sylvia Knight, said: "It's about releasing time for staff to spend on direct care rather than on carrying out tasks that add no value to the patient."

Four wards have taken part in the trial, with another four in Lincoln.

Nurses learn a technique called 'the five Ss'. These are sort, set, shine, standardise and sustain, and are applied to day-to-day tasks.

"This is about changing the way ward teams think about their environment and the way they undertake care," Mrs Knight added.

Ward teams at Pilgrim Hospital focused on handovers, the process when a patient's care is transferred from one nurse to another.

By replacing verbal handovers with an electronic version, nurses have found they have had an extra hour to attend directly to patients. An immediate benefit of this has been that nurses have had time to wake patients and have them sitting up by the time breakfast arrives.

At the meeting of the ULHT Board at Pilgrim Hospital last Tuesday, chairman David Bowles described the project as 'impressive, to put it mildly', and the intention is to roll it out across the entire trust.

The project, if implemented, could free up an extra 10 per cent of nurses' time, providing the equivalent of 21 extra nurses across the trust, it was claimed at the meeting.