Patterns of nurse activity.

A major study was undertaken in three acute hospitals of how nursing staff occupied their time on the medical, surgical and orthopaedic wards, the observation technique adopted being systematic activity sampling. In addition all the interactions patients received from nurses were recorded, the categorization scheme for both sets of data being identical. This paper presents the overall results which emerged from the computer analysis of this material. One of the less expected results is the amount of nursing performed which is categorized as Basic.