• Assessing vitals
• Administering medications
• Answering patient requests/call lights
• Assisting patients to ambulate
The main categories of activities for physicians
Category | Activities |
---|---|
• Patient assessment • Performing Procedures • Communicating with Patients • Making care plans/clinical progress | |
• Comprehending and Reviewing patient history • Understanding Problem lists/progress/results/results • Reviewing/reconciling medications • Writing daily progress notes • Preparing sign-out notes for next provider • Writing orders for medications/labs/tests • Consult orders • Preparing discharge summary with nurse practitioner | |
• Discussing plans and results of patient care with nurses, consult teams • Using EHR paging system, smart phone messages, phone call/F-to-F • Discussing progress, and likelihood of discharge with social workers and nurse navigators | |
• Providing required information by talking to patient family to let them make decisions | |
• Discussing care plans during rounds (for residents, fellows, interns, medical students) • Educational Activities throughout day |
The main categories of activities for Residents
Category | Activities |
---|---|
• Patient assessment • Perform procedures if needed • Discussing patient progress • Make care plans | |
• Reviewing patient information (from different sources) • Reviewing/understanding/acting on lab results • Acting on medication orders. Labs, precoders, and consults • Writing daily progress notes • Preparing discharge summary • Providing sign-out notes for next resident | |
• Communication between physician team and rest of provider roles • Updating social worker and nurse navigator twice daily on plans, likelihood of transfer, discharge, follow-up, services, etc. • Communicating with nurses to manage orders/medications • Attending in morning rounds and discuss on patient condition and plans with physicians | |
• Being asked throughout the day regarding patientcondition and different scenarios for required action |
Once all activities represented in the notes were categorized, for each healthcare worker, we mapped their work shift activity-time distributions by plotting their activities and the corresponding clock times when they performed the activities throughout their shift. With the categories and the corresponding activities available, for each participant, we calculated the category frequencies by counting the number of times each category occurred throughout the work shift. We then noted the beginning and ending times of that specific category and computed the activity duration. To ensure consistency in categorization and count analysis, the first author performed this analysis on a few participants first, which the second author reviewed for consistency and accuracy; the first author then computed the other frequencies and durations. Once we mapped the activities and times for each healthcare worker, we compared the frequencies and durations for nurses, residents, physicians. All data was normalized to 12 hours to facilitate comparisons between roles, because a majority of the healthcare workers we observed were on a 12-hour shift.
Finally, the average aggregated duration for documentation, and patient care activities were consolidated hour-by-hour for a work shift. With the categorized data, we conducted a paired t-test, a MANOVA, and univariate ANOVAs. A paired t-test was conducted to compare the overall times spent on documentation and patient care regardless of the clinical role of the healthcare provider. We also performed a MANOVA to understand and separate out the influence of different clinical roles on times spent on documentation and direct patient care activities. Univariate ANOVAs, conducted separately for each healthcare provider role, tested if their documentation times and direct patient care times differed significantly.
The main goal of the study was to determine whether healthcare workers spend a disproportionately large amount of time on documentation activities compared to direct patient care activities.
Table 4 shows the distribution of frequencies and time healthcare workers spent on different activities. Notably, on an average, documentation activities made up 40% of all activities across healthcare workers. Documentation also made up nearly 40% of the time spent by healthcare workers. Compared to documentation, direct patient care accounted for 30% of the frequency and 28% of the time. The other frequent activity where workers spent time was in communication and coordination.
Activity frequencies and time spent by healthcare workers on various activities. Average frequencies represent the number of times a healthcare worker was observed engaging in the activity; frequencies are counted across physicians, residents and nurses. The average time spent represents the time a healthcare worker spent on a certain activity over a 12-hour observation period. The time is reported in decimal hours; for example, 4.8 hours equates to 288 minutes.
Activity | Average Frequency | Average Frequency (%) | Average Time Spent (hrs) | Average Time Spent(%) |
---|---|---|---|---|
Documentation | 25 | 40% | 4.8 | 40% |
Patient care | 19 | 30% | 3.4 | 28% |
Communication and Coordination | 13 | 21% | 1.9 | 16% |
Team Support | 1 | 2% | 0.2 | 2% |
Patient Family Coordination | 1 | 1% | 0.2 | 2% |
Education | 2 | 4% | 0.3 | 3% |
Patient Education | 1 | 1% | 0.1 | 1% |
Break Time | 1 | 1% | 1.0 | 8% |
For the 12-hour observational period, to see how the activity times were distributed for each role, we separated out the times spent on documentation, direct patient care and the remaining activities by roles (see figure 1 ). Results show that physicians, residents, and nurses spent the highest amounts of time on documentation, compared to patient care or other activities. Further, physicians spent more time on documentation compared to residents and nurses.
Time spent by physicians, residents and nurses on documentation, patient care and other activities. The analyst observed the healthcare workers for 12-hours, so the times in figure 5 represent a 12-hour total.
It is also noteworthy that, on the average, physicians and residents spent more time on documentation than on direct patient care activity (averaged over the 12-hour observation period). Nurses spent about the same time on documentation and patient care.
Given that documentation and direct patient care emerged as the top two activities healthcare workers spent time on, we were interested in comparing the average time for documentation and the average time for patient care. We conducted a paired t-test to compare the time spent on documentation and the time spent on direct patient care. Results (see figure 2 ) indicate a significant difference in the time spent on documentation (M = 4.8, SD = 1.7) and the time spent on direct patient care (M = 3.4, SD = 1.62); t(21) = 2.418; p = 0.02.
Paired t-test between documentation time and patient care time. The box plot with the bar graph includes the 95% confidence interval about the mean, with the mean represented by the dot in the vertical line within the box for each activity. The box plot represents all 22 participants.
To further analyze whether documentation times and patient care times differed significantly by role, we conducted a MANOVA, with the healthcare worker’s role set at 3 qualitative levels (physician, resident and nurse). Results suggest that there is no significant difference between roles considering spent time on documentation, and patient care activities, when considered jointly, Wilk’s Lambda = 0.887, F (4,36) = 0.558, p = 0.695, and partial ɳ 2 = 0.058 (see Table 5 ).
Multivariate GLM with time spent on documentation and patient care activities as dependent variables for the three provider roles (residents, physicians, and nurses).
Effect | Value | F | Hypothesis df | Error df | p-value | Partial Eta Squared |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Role Wilks’ Lambda | .887 | .558 | 4.000 | 36.000 | .695 | .058 |
Besides the MANOVA, to test if the documentation time and the patient care time were significantly different when considered separately, we conducted a univariate ANOVA. Results indicate that there is no significant difference between residents, physicians and nurses in spent time on documentation activities, F (2,19) = 0.275, p = 0.763, partial ɳ 2 = 0.028. Similarly, there is no significant difference between residents, physicians and nurses in the times they spend on patient care activities, F (2,19) = 1.067, p = 0.364, partial ɳ 2 = 0.101 ( table 6 ).
ANOVA on mean differences of time spent on documentation and patient care activities considered separately between roles (residents, physicians, nurses).
Source | Dependent Variable | Type III Sum of Squares | df | Mean Square | F | p-value | Partial Eta Squared |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Role | Documentation | 1.706 | 2 | .853 | .275 | .763 | .028 |
Patient care | 5.547 | 2 | 2.774 | 1.067 | .364 | .101 | |
Error | Documentation | 59.003 | 19 | 3.105 | |||
Patient care | 49.370 | 19 | 2.598 |
We evaluated how much time healthcare workers spend on documentation, patient care, and other clinical tasks in a hospital with a mature electronic medical record system, which the hospital implemented eleven years ago. When an electronic system becomes mature with time, one would expect healthcare workers to take progressively lesser times for documentation given their increasing familiarity with the system, and because the technical support team for keeping the system running error-free would have ironed out all the kinks in the system.
Our study results, however, are contrary to these expectations for a mature system. Our results show that healthcare workers spend more time on documentation activities compared to patient care. Results also show that a healthcare worker’s clinical role does not significantly influence the times they spend on documentation or patient care; thus, physicians, residents, and nurses, all spend more time on documentation than patient care. Also, statistics on time distribution from our study indicate slight differences between documentation and patient care for physicians and residents compared to nurses. We discuss each study finding further in the following paragraphs.
Finding 1: healthcare workers spend more time on documentation activities compared to patient care activities.
A paired t-test showed a statistically significant difference between the time spent by a healthcare worker on documentation and the time spent by that worker on patient care. The time spent on documentation is more than the direct patient care time.
This finding raises an important question: why do healthcare workers spend more time on documentation even when the electronic documentation system is mature? Previous research has shown that documentation times increase when the technical support for using a new system, available in plenty during initial system implementation, becomes sparse once the system is up and running. It leaves healthcare workers to fend for themselves and learn new system features on their own ( Hakes & Whittington, 2008 ).
From our study observations, though, we can anecdotally state that healthcare workers used support systems only rarely. They were already familiar with the system, so this could not have contributed to the higher magnitudes of documentation times we saw. Similarly, we observed that healthcare workers in our study used only the typical features in the system to complete their everyday documentation responsibilities. We saw no evidence they tried new features - so any learning effects would not have contributed to the high documentation times seen in our study.
We think healthcare workers spend more time on documentation in a mature system for four other reasons. First, because electronic documentation systems are pervasive, and hospitals require their use, this is the principal way in which healthcare workers share information about a patient within their care unit and across other units. Hence, they may find it necessary to supply a greater amount of detail during documentation, details they may have otherwise communicated during an extended phone call or during a face-to-face conversation with another healthcare worker. It is also important to note that healthcare workers do not use documentation systems just for authoring information about a patient. They also use it for reviewing and learning about a patient. This indicates that workers also use documentation to get to know the patient, and thereby perform patient care. This reviewing and learning from the documentation will also add to the documentation time.
Second, the volume of patients and the complexity of patient cases might dictate how much time healthcare workers spend on documentation for each patient. Perhaps with an increase in patient volume, they will have less time available to spend on documentation ( Read-Brown et al., 2017 ) during their shift. Similarly, the underlying complexity of each patient may change the amount of documentation needed and hence, the time spent on documentation. Some studies ( Gottschalk & Flocke, 2005 ; Joukes et al., 2018 ) show that physicians spend time outside their regular work hours on documentation, highlighting the struggle between spending time on patient care compared to documentation. This tradeoff may be important when patient volume is high or when patient conditions are complex. To our knowledge, researchers have not studied these intricate relationships between patient characteristics and the time spent on documentation and patient care.
Third, mature electronic documentation systems have well-established documentation requirements. These requirements might mandate that healthcare workers fill many pieces of documentation every day, thus making documentation activities rote. We know from past research that repetitive and rote documentation requirements to fill pre-populated electronic templates lead to the copy-paste behaviors ( Hammond, Helbig, Benson, & Brathwaite-Sketoe, 2003 ; Wrenn, Stein, Bakken, & Stetson, 2010 ), and result in many information errors. It is possible that the amount of documentation needed is disproportionately high compared to care activities considering that a healthcare worker must complete the same document for a single patient every day even if the patient has been in the hospital for a while.
A related concern is the process of creating a document electronically, and the underlying usability challenges. For instance, because of record-keeping requirements, health providers create many electronic notes and documents every day for a single patient. This means to understand a patient case, a healthcare worker may have to search through several hundred notes and documents to find relevant information. They may also need to open multiple screens and documents at the same time to author new information in electronic notes. The question to ask here is whether all these additional actions contribute to increasing the total time a provider spends documenting.
Finally, documentation, whether paper-based or electronic, has always been important to hospital administrators for demonstrating accountability. That your task is “done only when it is documented” is a widely held belief among healthcare workers (MorrisseyRoss, 1988; Lorman Education Services, 2018). This belief might lead healthcare workers to spend more time in documenting their patient care than necessary.
In exploring the relationship between documentation and patient care activities, two important and related questions emerge. First, given that healthcare workers review documentation to perform patient care, and given that they must document their patient care, are documentation and patient care independent activities? Our view is that the boundary between documentation and patient care is not well-defined and that these two activities feed off each other. This question needs further investigation to inform the methods we use to measure time spent on activities, and to understand how electronic information systems may change the scope and characteristics of healthcare work. Second, can and should health providers reallocate the time they spend on documentation to patient care? Many studies in the past compare the time spent on documentation and patient care with the assumption that the time saved from documentation, when re-allocated to patient care, can improve care ( Banner & Olney, 2009 ; Oxentenko et al., 2010 ; Poissant, 2005 ; Wong et al., 2003 ). This assumption needs a thorough re-examination because caring for patients may only need a fixed amount of time and may not necessarily benefit from any extra time reallocated from the time saved from documentation.
Finding 2: there are no differences between clinical roles in the time they spend on documentation and patient care when considering the times jointly and separately. Finding 3: time distribution statistics show minor differences between documentation and patient care times for physicians and residents when compared to nurses.
Our MANOVA and univariate ANOVA reveal no statistically significant effects of a healthcare workers’ role in the time they spend on documentation compared to the time they spend on patient care. Regardless of their clinical role, they spend a comparable amount of time on documentation and patient care. This result raises an important concern that needs further investigation. Even though workers with different clinical roles perform different patient care activities, they all spend comparable amounts of time in documentation activities. This leads one to question whether documentation requirements have become so pervasive that all clinical roles spend vast amounts of time on documentation.
Although our statistical analyses reveal no significant differences across roles in time spent on documentation and patient care, descriptive statistics on the time spent by nurses, residents and physicians on documentation and patient care show that physicians and residents spend more time on documentation compared to patient care, while nurses seem to spend about an equal amount of time in both tasks.
The literature is inconclusive on whether nurses spend more time on documentation compared to patient care. Our study is convergent with some studies which report that nurses spend an equal amount of time on documentation and patient care, indicating differences in the content, amount, and scope of documentation for nurses ( Korst, Eusebio-Angeja, Chamorro, Aydin, & Gregory, 2005 ; Yee et al., 2012 ).
The differences in the specific activities undertaken by nurses when compared to doctors may explain why we saw differences among nurses and doctors in how they spend their time between documentation and patient care. When we categorize the activities of the healthcare workers into documentation, patient care, and communication and coordination activities, slight differences appear between nurses, physicians and residents. For example, as part of patient care activities, nurses may assess a patient’s health condition, assist in procedures, help ambulate the patient, administer medications and coordinate with other healthcare professionals who provide care. Physicians, on the other hand, as part of their patient care activities may spend time to assess patients and develop diagnoses, make plans for care, engage in education, perform procedures, and make treatment decisions. The patient care activities nurses and physicians perform every day are different, so the time they spend for their required patient care activities will differ.
In addition, nurses may spend less time on documentation compared to physicians or residents because of the differences in documentation requirements. Nurses typically document about their assessment of a patient, the plan of care for the patient, a patient’s vitals and medications, and their pain assessments. They also document discharge summaries. Physicians typically document about the patient’s history and physical exam in the form of progress notes, procedure notes, discharge summaries, and sign-out notes. They also review notes by other healthcare professionals. A recent study by Boyd et al., (2018) compared the discharge summaries of nurses and physicians to assess their relationship through use of unified medical language system (UMLS) and natural language processing analysis. They found that nurses and physicians were different in the terminology they used to create their respective documents; further, they found that the relatedness between the two sets of discharge summaries was low, indicating that nurses and physicians made different contributions to the patient outcomes even for the same patient. By extension, what they document and why they document in the electronic healthcare record also differs and will lead to differences in time spent on documentation. Nurses also spend time on documentation during major transitions such as discharges - we did not specifically analyze the relationship between transitions and the amount of documentation just during those transitions in this study.
Compared to nurses, physicians and residents spend more time on documentation than patient care in our study. Previous studies comparing time spent on documentation versus patient care among doctors portray mixed results, as summarized in our literature review in the introduction section. For physicians, Pizziferri et al., (2005) showed that there was a slight decrease in documentation time after implementing EHR. Ammenwerth et al., (2009) and Tai-Seale et al., (2017) indicated that patient care and documentation took an equal amount of time. Our study findings are most convergent with Joukes et al., (2018) who report that there was an increase in documentation time in one center that implemented EHR, and a decrease in patient care in another. Similarly, the study by Overhage, Perkins, Tierney and McDonald (2001) indicated a slight increase in the time for writing orders a year after implementation of an electronic system. These studies, however, compared documentation and patient care time when studying transitions to electronic health record systems, while our study evaluated the time spent on these activities in a mature and stable electronic system.
Besides the differences in scope of activities between nurses and doctors, billing levels and patient volumes also explain the increased documentation times seen among doctors. A model developed to explore the relationship between billing levels, patient volumes and EHR use in an ophthalmology unit found that an increase in billing levels related to an increase in EHR use time, while increases in patient volume decreased EHR use ( Read-Brown et al., 2017 ). Billing levels and complying to legal requirements are key incentives for documenting patient care and will influence the amount of documentation. An increase in patient volume may not allow enough time for documentation. So, physicians may catch up on documentation outside work hours ( Gottschalk & Flocke, 2005 ; Joukes et al., 2018 ) if increases in patient volumes do not allow enough time to document during regular work hours. Future studies will benefit from considering the interactions between billing levels and patient volume and traffic characteristics to generate a more comprehensive understanding of the differences in time spent on documentation versus patient care.
In summary, the findings from our study that healthcare workers spend more time on documentation and less time on patient care prompt further investigation about the “balance” between documentation and patient care. We need further research to understand what a reasonable amount of documentation is, and what excellent quality documentation should represent. What factors should influence how much healthcare workers document and what they document for every patient? Is there an expectation that healthcare workers must spend the same time for every patient? For example, if the patient’s underlying condition is more complex, would it need more data and a different type of documentation than for a less complex patient? Are patient care and documentation activities distributed based on the number and type of patient a healthcare worker sees, and based on the regulations that might underlie their activities? We posit that understanding if there is a balance between these two critical activities is the more challenging question that needs further study in mature information systems.
Our study evaluated the time spent on patient care, documentation, and other activities in a healthcare setting with a mature electronic healthcare system. We hope that this study will provide an impetus for future studies that examine other mediatory factors such as new regulations, changes in technology, and patient and provider characteristics and their interactions, in influencing documentation and patient care activities.
The main goal of the study was to determine the time that healthcare workers spend on documentation compared to direct patient care activities. We found that healthcare workers spend more time on documentation activities compared to patient care activities. The type of clinical role did not have an influence on time spent on documentation vs. patient care activities. Understanding the relationship between external factors such as regulations, technology challenges can make documentation and patient care effective.
Both authors were supported by a grant to the second author from the National Library of Medicine, NIH (5R00 LM0111384–03).
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Volume 18 Supplement 1
BMC Nursing volume 18 , Article number: 32 ( 2019 ) Cite this article
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Nurses engage in various activities from the time of a patient’s admission to his or her discharge from the hospital, helping patients to meet their needs. Each of the activities should be documented properly as authentic and crucial evidence. This study aimed to identify nursing activities in the delivery of nursing care based on the documentation completed.
A quantitative design with a retrospective approach was used, in which 240 medical records from Dr. Kariadi Hospital in Semarang, dating from July through September 2016, were obtained and assessed. The records were randomly selected based on the 10 most common medical and surgical diseases and a hospital stay of more than 3 days. The instrument for collecting the data from the patient progress notes used an observations form. The data were analyzed using univariate statistics and needed to be at least 80% of the values for a certain criteria for it to be considered. The results were analyzed to compare the standard of care.
It was revealed that nursing activities in the delivery of nursing care were insufficient. These activities, according the standard of nursing activities, included the assessment of the functional status of decubitus risk (20.8%), biological status (0.4%), formulation of a nursing diagnosis (20.8%), identification of patients’ home needs (41.3%), quality of life (66.3%), collaboration intervention in drug administration (60.8%), monitoring of vital signs (23.3%), monitoring of daily living activities (37.5%), mobilization/rehabilitation (37.5%), outcome (46.7%), and resume activities nursing (0.8%).
Nursing activities are very important within the hospital and must solve the problems that the patient needs. Every nursing activity should produce documentation with critical thinking. If nursing documents are not clear and accurate, inter-professional communication and an evaluation of nursing care cannot be optimal. Nursing activity and documentation should be continuously directed, controlled, and evaluated by a nurse manager. The quality of nursing activities should always be good to increase patient satisfaction, patient safety, and cost-effectiveness.
Nurses are involved in many activities in a hospital from patient admission through discharge. They provide continuous 24-h patient care, which is divided into several shifts [ 1 ]. Patient care includes performing assessments, stating nursing diagnoses, developing intervention plans, implementing care, and making evaluations to modify or terminate care [ 2 ]. Examples of nursing interventions include discharge planning and education, the provision of emotional support, self-hygiene and oral care, monitoring fluid intake and output, ambulation, the provision of meals, and surveillance of a patient’s general condition [ 3 ]. The delivery of nursing care should involve the patient. A nurse respectfully communicates, coordinates, and integrates nursing care, provides education and information, and considers the comprehensive and continuous physical and emotional comfort of the patient [ 4 ]. In addition, a nurse employs an appropriate strategy to establish a good rapport with a patient and is able to understand a patient’s condition in such a way that they can motivate him or her to actively participate in every nursing activity [ 5 ].
Each nursing activity should consider patient safety. Nurses are responsible for preventing patients from falling and from developing pressure ulcers, urinary tract infections, and nosocomial infections [ 6 ]. They provide education and information regarding the procedures involved in nursing interventions beforehand and involve patients for their own safety; effective communication is the key to patient safety [ 7 ].
Nursing activity that has been completed or that will take place should be properly documented. Accurate documentation and reports play a pivotal role in health services [ 8 ]. This documentation is necessary to identify nursing interventions that have been provided to patients and to show patient progress during hospitalization [ 9 ]. It is also an indicator of nurse performance and the nursing service quality in a hospital. Documentation provides details of patient condition, nursing interventions that have been provided, and patient response to the intervention(s) [ 10 ].
Nursing documentation also serves as an effective tool of inter-professional communication between nurses and other health professionals for delivering ongoing nursing care, evaluating patient progress and outcomes, and providing constant patient protection [ 11 ]. High-quality nursing documentation may improve the effectiveness of communication between health professionals in first- and higher-level healthcare facilities [ 12 ].
The documentation should be saved for an appropriate length of time and should be concise and clear; complete, accurate, and up-to-date documentation will protect a nurse in a court of law [ 13 ]. Correct documentation may encourage a nurse to establish continuity between the diagnosis, intervention, progress, and evaluation of the outcome [ 14 ]. A previous study revealed that 54.7% of nursing documents were of poor quality and 71.6% were incomplete [ 15 ]. Supervision by the head nurse is required for complete, concise, and accurate documentation of nursing care [ 16 ]. The information above provides a platform for managers and nurses to better understand the delivery of nursing care.
A quantitative, cross-sectional, and retrospective study used the medical records of discharged patients. The medical records concerned patients who had been hospitalized for more than 3 days at the medical surgical ward.
The study was conducted in DK Hospital of Semarang from October until December 2016. Data were obtained from July to September 2016 from 240 medical records of patients with the 10 most common medical surgical diseases. The 240 medical records were randomly selected by simple random methods based on even and odd numbers. Ethical clearance procedures were followed. Medical records data were maintained confidentially, were used only for research purposes, and were not disseminated for other purposes.
The authors recorded all nursing activities performed by nurses from the time of a patient’s admission until his or her discharge via an observation form that had been developed by referring to patient progress notes. This observation form consists of nursing activities and had been tested for validity and reliability to achieve optimal data. The validity and reliability results were r Alpha > 0.90 and coefficient kappa > 0.80.
The collected data were assigned codes, inputted into a computer, and cleared of unnecessary information. The data were checked during entry and compilation before analysis. After checking the data for completeness, missing values, and coding questionnaires, data were entered into the computer and analyzed. Univariate analysis was used to identify the frequency and percentage of nursing activities performed. The results were analyzed to compare the standard of care with the hospital accreditation standard and needed to be at least 80% of the values for a certain criteria for it to be considered.
A total of 240 medical records for patients who had been hospitalized for more than 3 days in the medical surgical ward were obtained and analyzed. Data were obtained from the documentation completed by nurses while providing nursing care for each patient. These activities involved patient identification, assessment, nursing diagnosis formulation, discharge planning, education, intervention, monitoring and evaluation, mobilization/rehabilitation, and nursing outcomes. The results are presented in Table 1 below.
The results show that the nurses performance on some nursing activities were below standard (80%). Some nursing activities which needed to be optimized including the assessment of functional status, risk of a pressure ulcer (20.8%), assessment of biological aspect (0.4%), formulation of a nursing diagnosis (20.8%), collaboration in drug administration (60.8%), monitoring of vital signs (23.3%), monitoring of activities of daily living (ADL) (37.5%), mobilization/rehabilitation (37.5%), nursing outcome (46.7%), identification of patients’ home (41.3%), quality of life (66.3%), and nursing activities resumé (0.8%).
The results also indicated that nursing activities were not implemented in compliance with the nursing process; for example, some nurses had not properly performed a biological assessment before proceeding to formulate their diagnosis and perform an intervention. Although the interventions were properly executed, the mobilization and monitoring activities could be improved. Nurses rarely formulated a nursing diagnosis before the expected outcome; however, these two activities should be performed in order, since it may affect the planned nursing intervention. The nurses did not properly identify the patients’ home needs in discharge planning, nor did they create an optimal nursing activities resumé.
The results revealed that nursing activities to solve problems and meet patient needs in the provision of nursing care were not systematically performed and critical thinking was not applied during the nursing process. A previous study asserted that the nursing process incorporates the assessment, nursing diagnosis, planning, implementation, evaluation, and documentation [ 16 ]. The phases in the nursing process are interconnected and become a continuous cycle. Therefore, steps in this process are interrelated, interactive, and cannot stand alone [ 17 ].
It was also shown that some nurses did not perform a biological assessment, yet they proceeded to formulate nursing diagnoses and perform interventions. A nursing diagnosis, however, should be based on the assessment result and used as reference in determining the intervention [ 18 ]. Nurses should consider using a nursing process that complies with the input, process, and output in formulating an intervention, since it may affect the quality of care and patient safety in general [ 19 ]. Patient safety is a fundamental concern for all nurses and health professionals, from the patient’s admission to the hospital until discharge; therefore, it is required that every nursing process is implemented according to the standards applied and in a sustainable manner. If these standards are not observed, then the nurses and other health professionals would not meet patient needs and may even compromise patient safety.
It was shown that nursing activities in identifying the patients’ home needs and quality of life during discharge planning were not properly implemented. Discharge planning is a crucial nursing activity that facilitates a patient’s readiness regarding his or her discharge from the hospital; it allows a patient to be safely transferred from the hospital to their own home. Lack of nursing support in this activity has previously resulted in an increased number of patient readmissions [ 20 ]. Although discharge planning also involves other healthcare professionals, the nurse has the longest amount of time to interact with the patient. The nurse should understand the patient’s condition, recognize their ability to accept it, and improve the readiness of the patient and their family for continuing care at home.
The collaboration intervention of drug administration was not fully implemented. Nurses should provide education regarding the function, composition, and side effects of a drug and adverse reactions that may occur with uncontrolled use. Therefore, a nurse should ensure that a patient has been properly informed of the drug prescribed by a physician. A previous study revealed that collaboration in drug administration in provision of nursing care may improve patient satisfaction and reduce their stress and anxiety [ 5 ].
The findings revealed that nursing activities in vital signs and ADL monitoring were not correctly implemented. Monitoring is a critical nursing activity and identifies a patient’s condition and ability to meet their daily needs so that a nurse may devise an appropriate intervention. A previous study revealed that nurses played a pivotal role in helping patients to recuperate by performing an assessment, monitoring, intervention, evaluation, and provision of support [ 21 ], immediately recognizing a change in a patient’s condition, health promotion, preventing morbidity, improving patient satisfaction, and quality of care.
In the present study, nursing activities in patient mobilization/rehabilitation were not properly executed. Patient mobilization/rehabilitation is an activity that must be implemented immediately after a patient’s hemodynamic parameters are stabilized in order to improve their physical condition. A previous study stated that nurses should pay heed and motivate patients in rehabilitation to ensure effective and cost-effective care [ 22 ].
The present findings also showed that nursing activities in deciding the patient outcome were not optimal. The determination of outcome serves to evaluate how much progress has been made by a patient following the delivery of nursing care. Indeed, one study claimed that the determination of outcome reflected the unique contribution of nursing care toward patient safety [ 23 ].
The present findings of improper nursing activities may have resulted from numerous factors, such as having to perform a large number of non-nursing duties, manual documentation, a lack of standards in documenting patient progress notes, and the exclusion of nursing care in calculating remuneration.
All nursing activities should be properly documented as authentic information and used to evaluate nursing care and professional competency. Nursing documentation is an essential component of professional practice to improve the quality of nursing care and should be accurate and complete [ 24 , 25 ]. Complete documentation encourages nurses to work effectively and appropriately [ 14 ].
Some nursing activities have been done properly, but they were not continuously in compliance with the nursing process. Nursing care was not systematically performed and critical thinking was not applied during the nursing process. Many nurses did not do a biological assessment, yet they proceeded to formulate nursing diagnoses and perform interventions. Nursing activities in identifying patients’ home needs and quality of life during discharge planning, collaboration intervention of drug administration, vital signs and ADL monitoring, patient mobilization/rehabilitation. and deciding the patient outcome were not properly implemented.
The nursing process should be properly implemented in order to improve patient and nurse satisfaction, quality of care, patient safety, and cost-effectiveness, as well as to reduce the average length of stay. A nurse who has completed nursing activities is required to document the care provided, according to the standard applied. Nursing activities and documentation may be more likely to be optimal if they are regularly directed, controlled, and evaluated by the nurse manager. A nurse and patient satisfaction survey should also be periodically conducted to evaluate the quality of nursing activities in the delivery of nursing care for patients.
Activities of daily living
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The authors would like to thank the Faculty of Nursing, Universitas Indonesia for financial support. Their grateful thanks also go to the informants who participated in the study and openly shared their thoughts and experiences.
The publication cost of this article was funded by PITTA Universitas Indonesia grant, under grant no.365/UN2.R3.1/HKP.05.00/2017.
The data and materials used for analysis and make conclusion are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
This article has been published as part of BMC Nursing Volume 18 Supplement 1, 2019: Selected articles from the 6th Biennial International Nursing Conference. The full contents of the supplement are available online at https://bmcnurs.biomedcentral.com/articles/supplements/volume-18-supplement-1 .
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Nursing Program, Faculty of Health Sciences, Esa Unggul University, Jakarta, 11510, Indonesia
Mira Asmirajanti
Faculty of Nursing Universitas Indonesia, Jln. Prof. Dr. Bahder Djohan, Kampus UI, Depok, West Java, 16424, Indonesia
Achir Yani S. Hamid & Rr. Tutik Sri Hariyati
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Correspondence to Achir Yani S. Hamid .
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Asmirajanti, M., Hamid, A.Y.S. & Hariyati, R.T.S. Nursing care activities based on documentation. BMC Nurs 18 (Suppl 1), 32 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-019-0352-0
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Electronic medical record (EMR) point-of-care (POC) documentation in patients' rooms is a recent shift in technology use in hospitals. POC documentation reduces inefficiencies, decreases the probability of errors, promotes information transfer, and encourages the nurse to be at the bedside. However, EMR POC documentation has the potential to distract the nurse's attention away from the patient and compromise the nurse-patient interaction.
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Journal List; BMC Nurs; v.21; 2022; PMC8795724 As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health. ... Nursing documentation can be described as a reflection of the entire process of providing direct ...
At the time of writing there were four systematic reviews related to nursing documentation. Three (Johnson et al., 2018; Müller-Staub et al., 2006; Saranto et al., 2014) examined the impacts of standardized nursing languages (SNL) on the quality of nursing documentation.They were narrative reviews, and include studies that were not necessarily confined to the acute sector.
Introduction. Clinical documentation is the process of creating a text record that summarizes the interaction between patients and healthcare providers during clinical encounters [].The quality of clinical documentation is important as it impacts quality of patient care, patient safety, and the number of medical errors [2-4].Furthermore, clinical documentation is increasingly used for other ...
Nursing documentation is a critical aspect of the nursing care workflow. There is a varying degree in how detailed nursing reports are described in scientific literature and care practice, and no uniform structured documentation is provided. ... Inclusion criteria were (1) - availability of the full text of the journal articles, (2) - language ...
Nursing documentation, according to one definition of the term, is a record or chart of nursing care that is organized and provided to individual patients by licensed nurses or other caregivers under the supervision of a qualified nurse [1, 2].Documentation in nursing is the primary source of clinical information that helps to satisfy legal standards of practice in patient care [3, 4].
Abstract. Effective record-keeping and documentation is an essential element of all healthcare professionals' roles, including nurses, and can support the provision of safe, high-quality patient care. This article explains the importance of record-keeping and documentation in nursing and healthcare, and outlines the principles for maintaining ...
Rykkje L. (2009). Implementing electronic patient record and VIPS in medical hospital wards: Evaluating change in quantity and quality of nursing documentation by using the audit instrument Cat-ch-Ing. Nordic Journal of Nursing Research & Clinical Studies / Vård i Norden, 29(2), 9-13.
Objective: To evaluate the impact of electronic nursing documentation on patient safety, quality of nursing care and documentation. Methods: The systematic review was conducted in December 2022, and comprised a comprehensive search on Scopus, ScienceDirect, ProQuest, PubMed, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Sage Journals and Google Scholar databases for English ...
Journal of Nursing Management. Volume 27, Issue 3 p. 491-501. ORIGINAL ARTICLE. ... With the gradual move from paper-based to electronic nursing documentation internationally, there is a need to identify interventions that can effectively improve quality care and patient safety.
Aims and objectives: To assess and compare the quality of paper-based and electronic-based health records. The comparison examined three criteria: content, documentation process and structure. Background: Nursing documentation is a significant indicator of the quality of patient care delivery. It can be either paper-based or organised within the system known as the electronic health records.
Background The time that nurses spent on documentation can be substantial and burdensome. To date it was unknown if documentation activities are related to the workload that nurses perceive. A distinction between clinical documentation and organizational documentation seems relevant. This study aims to gain insight into community nurses' views on a potential relationship between their ...
The importance of nursing documentation in Denmark is acknowledged on numerous grounds. It is typically viewed as a precondition for diligent care and as an important communication tool, with the potential to enhance patient safety. 7-9 Furthermore, electronic health records allow the collection, storage and extraction of enormous amounts of information. 10 Digital technologies should reduce ...
The fact that another nursing documentation instrument has been developed and implemented implies that the audit of ... Yu P., 2011, ' Quality of nursing documentation and approaches to its evaluation: A mixed-method systematic review ', Journal of Advanced Nursing 67 (9), 1858-1875. 10.1111/j.1365-2648.2011.05634.x [Google ...
This paper provides a synopsis of available literature related to the frameworks mentioned above, highlights barriers to safe, timely and accurate documentation for nurses, and concludes with an explanation of the framework chosen as a result of this review. Keywords: nursing documentation. nursing reports. literature review.
Electronic nursing records have been argued as a tool to increase patient safety through better continuity of care, better quality of care, more patient-centered care and equal care [1,2,3].While digital nursing documentation can be structured in different ways, the majority of electronic nursing records has been shown to be organised according to the nursing process [2, 4].
A number of frameworks are currently available to assist with nursing documentation including narrative charting, problem orientated approaches, clinical pathways, and focus notes. However many nurses still experience barriers to maintaining accurate and legally prudent documentation. A review of nursing documentation of patient care and ...
The primary purpose of nursing documentation is to ensure the safety and well-being of patients. Comprehensive records help healthcare providers make informed decisions and provide continuity of care to patients. Inadequate or incorrect documentation can lead to medical errors, jeopardizing patient safety and quality of care.
Introduction. Clinical documentation is the process of creating a written or electronic record that describes a patient's history and the care given to a patient (Blair & Smith, 2012; Wilbanks et al., 2016).It serves as an important communication tool for the exchange of information between healthcare providers and it is stored in a printed or electronic medical record (Duclos-Miller, 2016 ...
Journal of Graduate Medical Education, 5 (4), 600-604. 10.4300/JGME-D-12-00377.1 ... Aydin CE, & Gregory KD (2005). Nursing Documentation Time During Implementation of an Electronic Medical Record In Anderson JG & Aydin CE (Eds.), Evaluating the Organizational Impact of Healthcare Information Systems (pp. 304-314).
The premise of CDI is simple: engage clinicians to improve the clinical documentation in the medical record in "real time" so that it is fit for reporting, analysis and reimbursement. Every country has differing healthcare systems and this article has focused on validating the relevancy of CDI for the Australian healthcare environment.
Abstract. Record keeping is an essential part of nursing practice with clinical and legal significance. Good quality record keeping is linked with improvements in patient care, while poor standards of documentation are regarded as contributing to poor quality nursing care. The quality of nursing documentation has consistently been found to be ...
Background Nurses engage in various activities from the time of a patient's admission to his or her discharge from the hospital, helping patients to meet their needs. Each of the activities should be documented properly as authentic and crucial evidence. This study aimed to identify nursing activities in the delivery of nursing care based on the documentation completed. Methods A ...
The Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services is a monthly, peer-reviewed journal publishing up-to-date research and content for clinical practice that promotes optimal care to diverse populations and communities with mental health needs. The Journal welcomes clinically relevant research articles, clinical practice articles, literature reviews, and short commentaries on ...
The keywords 'nursing documentation', 'audit', 'evaluation', 'quality', both singly and in combination, were used to identify articles published in English between 2000 and 2010. Review methods: A mixed-method systematic review of quantitative and qualitative studies concerning nursing documentation audit and reports of audit instrument ...
Cynthia Peterson, PhD, RN, CCRN-K, NE-BC, is a Nurse Scientist at Baystate Medical Center, and an Assistant Nurse Manager and Nurse Scientist at The University of Vermont Medical Center.Her professional areas of focus are nursing leadership, well-being and resilience programming, evidence-based practice program development, and global health service-learning to enhance cultural humility among ...
Electronic medical record (EMR) point-of-care (POC) documentation in patients' rooms is a recent shift in technology use in hospitals. POC documentation reduces inefficiencies, decreases the probability of errors, promotes information transfer, and encourages the nurse to be at the bedside. However, EMR POC documentation has the potential to ...