WORK SAMPLING: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF NURSING ACTIVITY IN A MEDICAL WARD

Abstract

Nurses perform direct nursing care activities as well as participate in other “indirect” nursing care activities such as ward administration, management and continued professional development activities which form part of the nursing work load in medical ward. Thus it is necessary to understand the proportion of nursing work load assigned to other activities and trends of variation in nursing activities throughout the day in order to estimate the actual staffing requirements. A work sampling method was used and a snapshot of nursing activity was recorded at 10 minute intervals from 7.00am to 7.00 pm for a week. The results revealed that a total of 1335 activities were observed and recorded over a week time and categorized as follows: Basic nursing care (6.2%), complex nursing care (66.8%), administration (4.1%), clerical (9.9%), housekeeping (1.7%), maintenance (2.4%) and non productive activities (8.7%). The proportion of complex nursing care activities mainly concentrated in morning shifts and to a lesser extent n the afternoon shifts. It was concluded that more than half of the nursing activities performed by staff nurses were complex nursing activities. Also nurses perform other activities such as clerical, administration and non productive activities and these activities must be considered for estimating staffing requirements.