[Comparison of direct and indirect nursing care time in 8-hour and 12-hour shifts]

ABSTRACT

Nurses are the largest and one of the most important groups of health care providers. The quality of health care mostly depends on the quality of direct and indirect nursing care. Measuring the average nursing care time is an objective measure for assessing the quality of patient care. The goal of the present study was to compare the time being devoted to professional - nonprofessional activities by nurses in 8 hours and 12 hours working shift in Shahid Modarres teaching hospital in Tehran. A descriptive- comparative study was conducted on 30 nurses [27 female, and 3 male] working in medical and surgical wards of Shahid Modarres teaching hospital in Tehran. The nurses were working 8 and 12 hours shifts and in rotating schedule. Data were collected by direct observation of nurses' activities, using a checklist with list of direct, indirect and nonprofessional nursing activities. The reliability of the checklist was assured by calculating inter observers' agreement [The duration of time which nurses spent for each activity was recorded. Data were analyzed using SPSS and Wilcoxon test. The findings of the present study revealed that, nurses working 8 hour shift duration, spent 64.99% of their time on professional and 35.3% on nonprofessional activities [41.21% on direct nursing care, 23.78% on indirect nursing care, 22.53% on personnel affairs and 12.5% on administrative activities]. Nurses with 12 hour shift duration, spent 65.59% of their times on professional activities and 33.92% on nonprofessional activities [41.57% on direct healthcare, 24.02% on indirect healthcare, 20.94% on personnel affairs and 12.98% administrative activities]. Nurses working in both 8 and 12 hours shift spend most of their times for professional activities [direct and indirect healthcare] and devote less time to nonprofessional activities [administrative and personal affairs], and these activities are independent of their shift duration