Health care time and motion studies measure time and motion of health care workers to research and track efficiency and quality. In the case of nurses, numerous programs have been initiated to increase the percent of a shift nurses spend providing direct care to patients. Prior to interventions nurses were found to spend ~20% of their time doing direct care. After focused intervention, some hospitals doubled that number, with some even exceeding 70% of shift time with patients, resulting in reduced errors, codes, and falls.
Video Health care time and motion study
Methodologies
Maps Health care time and motion study
External observer
Someone visually follows the person being observed, either contemporaneously or via video recording. This method presents additional expense as it usually requires a 1 to 1 ratio of research time to subject time. An advantage is the data can be more consistent, complete, and accurate than with self-reporting.
Self-reporting
Self-reported studies require the target to record time and activity data. This can be done contemporaneously by having subjects stop and start a timer when completing a task, through work sampling where the subject records what they are doing at determined or random intervals, or by having the subject journal activities at the end of the day.
Self-reporting introduces errors that may not be present through other methods, including errors in temporal perception and memory, as well as the motivation to manipulate the data.
Automation
Motion can be tracked with GPS. Documentation activities can be tracked through monitoring software embedded in the applications used to create documentation. Badge scans can also create a log of activity.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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