Nurses' work time distribution at Emergency Service

Abstract

The objective of this quantitative, descriptive, case study was to identify and analyze the distribution of nurses' work time at an emergency service. To do this, the work sampling method was used. The nursing activities performed by the studied nurses were identified by evaluating the patient care forms and by direct observation of nurses during their everyday work routine at the service. The identified activities were then categorized according to a standardized language system. It was found that 35% of the nurses' time was dedicated to indirect care interventions, 35% to direct care interventions, 18% to private time activities and 12% to related activities. The average productivity of the studied workers was 82%. This study provided evidence of perspectives to perform further research to identify the parameters that would support the process of rightsizing nursing personnel at emergency services.