Who's With the Patients?

When the term "patient care" is used, one might think the patient is actually present. However, most patient care tasks by nurses and by interns is not direct patient care. Nurses spend about 37% of their time directly taking care of patients. Not that they are lounging! Nurses also complete an average of 67 tasks per hour. What are they doing? Primarily documenting, communicating between caregivers, and walking between tasks. Interns spend even less time with their patients; approximately 12% of their time is directly at the bedside.   They also spend time walking, but the majority of their time is working with the electronic medical record. Unfortunately many of our required tasks take us away from the bedside of those that needs us most.

Read more