Abstract
This time and motion study aimed to explore the nursing workflow of intensive care unit (ICU) registered nurses in mainland China. We identified 107 kinds of nursing activity (six categories and 20 subcategories), observed 30 nurses for a total period of 580.8 hr, and analyzed 5,588 nursing activities. The nurses spent most of their time in direct nursing care (51.27% of the total working time), nursing documentation (17.91%), and communication (17.61%). Direct nursing care was the most time-consuming activity between 5:00 and 7:00 a.m. and the least time-consuming between 12:00 and 1:00 p.m. and 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. Although nursing records were kept by an information system, documentation still required a large percentage of the nurses’ working time. It was found that the time-consumption for each nursing activity varied during the day among the studied Chinese ICUs. Hence, nursing managers should arrange shift dynamics based on nurses’ actual workflow and load.
Highlights
Knowledge in nursing workflow is important for nursing management and human allocation (Qian et al, 2012)
Patients in intensive care units (ICUs) are more prone to experience worsening health conditions owing to disease changes; the majority of patients in ICU are at high risk for death (Gooch & Kahn, 2014)
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to analyze the nursing workflow and time structure in ICUs after the intensive care information system was applied in mainland China
Summary
Knowledge in nursing workflow is important for nursing management and human allocation (Qian et al, 2012). It is defined by a wide range of steps or activities that health nursing staff perform to care for their patients (Zheng et al, 2010), namely, the time and frequency of daily activities in a nursing ward. The distribution and duration of nursing activities in the ICU context are important to be researched In this regard, the researchers’ observation of the workflow of nursing staff could be an effective way to identify possible redundant and inefficient processes
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