How much time do nurses need to write an ICU diary?

Area of Science:

• Nursing
• Patient Care
• Healthcare Quality

Background:

• Intensive Care Unit (ICU) diaries support patients and their families during and after hospitalization.
• Barriers to diary implementation include nurse workload, perceived excessive closeness to patients, and time constraints.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the time nurses spend writing ICU diaries.
• To determine if the initial diary entry requires more time than subsequent entries.
• To assess the influence of nurse experience and workload on time spent writing diaries.

Main Methods:

• A quantitative, prospective, international observational multicenter study was conducted in four ICUs across Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland.
• Nurses recorded the time spent writing diaries, number of entries, nurse-patient ratio, experience level, and interruptions over a 6-month period.

Main Results:

• The first diary entry took significantly longer (mean 13:33 min) than subsequent entries (mean 5:31 min).
• Time for subsequent entries varied significantly by country: Switzerland (6:14 min), Sweden (5:31 min), and Germany (3:36 min).
• Higher nurse-patient ratios correlated with decreased time for subsequent entries.

Conclusions:

• Writing ICU diaries represents an additional time commitment and workload for nurses.
• The time required for diary writing is considered feasible given the potential for enhanced nursing care quality.
• Self-reported time measurements may introduce bias into the study findings.