ALLOCATION OF NURSING TIME

The purpose of the study was to examine the allocation of nursing time to various activities of registered and assistant nurses during the d ay shift. Twenty-three registered (RN) and eighteen assistant nurses ( AN) working in medical and surgical wards of five large hospitals were studied. The findings have shown that the most frequent activities pe rformed were: indirect care representing 35.6% of the time, direct car e representing 23.8% of the time, personal activities representing 16. 8% of the time, and direct nursing interventions representing 8.2% of the time. Cross-tabulation revealed that RNs provided direct care less frequently and indirect care more frequently than ANs (25.3 activitie s per RN and 27.5 per AN, 62.1 activities per RN and 32.6 per AN, resp ectively). Many indirect care activities were found to be the responsi bility of the head nurse (64), secretary (465), and others (104). Less expected results were the minimal amounts of time spent on both educa tion and research activities (1.3% and 0.0% respectively). Nurse manag ers have to free nurses from subsidiary work and to find mechanisms to distribute nursing valuable time more efficiently.