Time Study RN/MD
How does Time Study RN/MD work?
Time Study RN/MD is a simple and easy to use time measurement system for Nurses and Hospitalists that was designed by a Nursing research team in the RWJ TCAB project. The purpose of Time Study RN/MD is to measure how Care Givers spend their time. Time Study RN uses a self sampling methodology that works like this…
The Sampling Plan…
Studies are limited in scope to a hospital unit. The sampling plan includes a minimum of 2 PDA’s per hospital unit. This allows one PDA to be charging while the other PDA is in use. PDA’s should not be handed from one shift to the next because shift overlap will result in missed data. To avoid this error, each care giver will always start their shift by taking a charging PDA, and at the end of their shift will place the PDA back in the charging cable.
1. At the beginning of a shift…
A Nurse or hospitalist will take a Time Study RN PDA and start a study at the beginning of the shift. The PDA will randomly alarm 28 times in 12 hours or approximately once every 26 minutes. When the PDA alarms the care giver will be prompted to enter the following information:
1. Where did I come from?
2. Where am I now?
3. What am I doing?
4. Can what I am doing be done by a lower skilled resource? If so pick from a list of resources.
The care giver will continue with the PDA for the entire shift. The alarm frequency has been field tested to ensure that alarm frequency does not overburden the care givers, yet provides the quantity of data necessary for a valid study. At the end of the Shift the Nurse plugs the PDA into it’s charging cable to recharge.
The study runs for 7 continuous 24 hour days.
2. At the end of the Week...
Data from the PDA’s is downloaded to a folder on the network and organized by Hospital Unit, Year, and Month. If a hospital is participating in the National Benchmarking Database, then the data is uploaded to the National Benchmarking Database website. Reports and graphs breaking down how and where time is spent are automatically generated and published to the TCAB team.
3. The National Benchmarking Database...
If you choose to participate in the National Benchmarking Database, then you will upoad your data to the National Benchmarking Database website. The team will receive your data and process it into the National Benchmarking Database. This process takes approximately 2 weeks. After the data is processed you will receive the National Benchmarking Database Summary report for collaboration with other hospitals. In addition, you will receive the following reports:
The National Benchmarking Database is being integrated with RMC’s web site and will be fully automated in the near future. The automation will provide additional reports and flexibility to track any of the 100 different parameters that we track. In addition, it will provide a standardized research platform for participants and for university based research teams. This automation should be complete in August 2009.