Classification of Nursing Activities and Workload Analysis in a New Open Hospital

환자중심 간호업무 향상을 위한 간호업무 측정에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study was to confirm the classification of nursing activity and to analyze the time of nursing workload in a new open hospital. The data were collected from 20 nurses working in 6 general nursing units by 4 trained observers. The tools used for this study were an observation recording sheet and a classification sheet of nursing activity. The classification sheet was constructed to be adaptable to each hospital system based on the instrument described in the literature. The results of the study are as follows : The direct nursing activities consisted of 6 sections, 33 subsections and the indirect nursing activities consisted of 14 sections, 53 subsections. The direct nursing activities included medication, measuring and observation, care of therapies, care of physical comfort, laboratory and treatment. The indirect nursing activities included preparation of medical utensils, collection of information and assessment, recording, phone communication, professional interaction related to patients, personal time, assigning work to staff, patient eaucation and training, interaction with lab, transfer of administration of utensils, checking physician's order, dietary service, management of pollution and contagion, guide direction. Nurses spent 127.6min for direct nursing activity during day duty. It was 24.5% of total nursing activity. Within that activity medication had the highest percentage of time(40.09%), followed by communication and education with patient(24.76%), measuring and observation (16.93%), laboratory and treatment (12.85%), care of therapies(3.21%) and care of physical comfort (2.16%). The time breakdown for indirect nursing activities is as follows ; the preparation of medical utensils 22.3%, collection of information and assessment 20.29%, recording 20.27%, phone communication 8.14%, professional interaction related to patients 7.33%, personal time 7.24%, with the remaining timeshared by staffing, patient education and training, interaction with lab, transfer of administration of utensils, checking physician's order, dietary service, management of pollution and contagion, guide direction. In the analysis of the relationships between the working time and the work allocation characters of the nurses(including nurse's experiences. nurse-patients ratio, nurse-rooms ratio, and character of nursing unit) ; There were no significant differences in direct-indirect nursing times between nurse's career years. There was significant difference in direct nursing time between assigned patient numbers. The nurses assigned larger number of patients spent significantly more time in direct nursing care than that of the smaller. On the other hand, there was no significant difference in indirect nursing workload between the assigned patient numbers. There were no significant differences in direct-indirect nursing time between an allocated patient's room numbers. There was significant difference in working time between working places. The nurse in the medical unit spent more time in direct nursing care than her counterpart in the surgical unit. However there was no difference in direct nursing time between two groups. The study results indicate that nurses spent less time in the direct nursing care than in the previous studies even though the hospital system has been modernized. On the other hand they spent much more time for the coordinating role within the interdisciplinary team and for the overlapping paperwork. Therefore it is recommended that patient oriented job description and more efficient usage of modernized utilities be made.