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Information seeking by nurses during beginning-of-shift activities.
1College of Nursing, University of Utah, Salt Lake City 84103.
Proceedings. Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care
|January 1, 1992
Summary
Nurses spend significant time seeking patient information, especially medication details, during the initial hour of their shift. Retrieving nursing-specific data like assessments takes longer, impacting workflow efficiency.
Area of Science:
- Nursing Informatics
- Healthcare Management
- Information Science
Background:
- Effective patient care relies on timely access to critical information for nurses.
- Shift changes present unique challenges for information retrieval and workflow planning.
Purpose of the Study:
- To quantify the time nurses spend seeking information at the start of a shift.
- To identify the types of information most frequently sought by nurses.
- To compare retrieval times for different categories of nursing information.
Main Methods:
- Observational study of nurses for one hour post-shift report.
- Categorization and timing of information-seeking behaviors.
- Analysis of information types retrieved.
Main Results:
- Nurses dedicated approximately 25% of the first hour to information seeking.
- Medication schedules were the most common information sought.
- Nursing assessments and summaries were more time-consuming to retrieve than other data types.
Conclusions:
- Information seeking is a substantial component of nurses' initial work hour.
- Optimizing access to nursing-specific data, like assessments, could improve efficiency.
- Findings align with and extend previous research on nursing information needs.