Assessment and analysis of nursing workload of tertiary general hospitals based on work sampling method

Abstract

Objective To assess and analyze clinical nursing workload of tertiary general hospitals in Tianjin. Methods 4 tertiary general hospitals in Tianjin were recruited by convenience sampling. 13 representative departments of the medical system and the surgical system were selected as the investigation departments. All the clinical duty nurses of every day work in selected departments were taken as the observation objects. Unified training investigators used work sampling method to observe and record the operation , movement, and others four types of activities of nurses, taking an observation point in a minute; SPSS17.0 was used for analysis. Results Totally 172 800 sampling points were selected. Besides 2.62% (4 534/172 800) of other affairs, the total nursing workload in one day was 97.38% (168 264/272800), with 85.03% (146 923/172 800) operating time including direct nursing accounting for 33.64% (58 144/172 800), indirect nursing accounting for 8.92% (15 422/172 800), and 42.46% (73 363/172 800) of related nursing. Movement accounted for 11.71% (20 228/172 800), while waiting accounted for 0.65% (1 113/172 800). Conclusion Generally, nurses in tertiary general hospitals have long working time and heavy workload, but direct nursing which can reflects the value and connotation of nursing work is low. In nursing work, the caused by the lack of personnel, material, equipment, environment problems made a waste of time and human resources to certain extent. Therefore, results of the present study can provide reference for tertiary hospitals to optimize the allocation of nursing human resources, improve the quality of nursing service, reduce the workload of nurses and construct lean management system. Key words: Work sampling method; Nursing care; Workload