Abstract

Objective: It is important to determine how nurses use their working time in order for the health service provided by them to be effectively sustained. In this study, it was aimed to determine how surgical nurses use their working time and the seperate their times on direct and indirect patient care practices.

Method: This descriptive and observational study was carried out in a public hospital in Istanbul between April and June 2017. All interventions performed by nurses in the surgical unit for one week were recorded by six independent observers by using the job sampling method with a stopwatch.

Results: It was found that surgical nurses allocate 65.45% of their daily working time directly, 30.98% to indirect patient care practices, 0.52% to service-related jobs and 3.05% to personal jobs.

Conclusion: Research findings revealed that surgical nurses devote the most time to patient care applications directly. In the results of working; It has become important that nurse manpower planning is done by taking into account the time spent in direct and indirect patient care practices of patients receiving treatment in the unit.