Multitasking of Nursing Activities: A Time to Motion Study to Capture Nursing Workflow Using Eye Tracker

Abstract

Background: With the development of medical care, nurses providing various medical services have no choice but to perform two or more tasks simultaneously. To identify the necessary nursing workforce, it is necessary to understand the nursing tasks currently being performed.Objective: The study used an eye tracker to collect objective and real-world data regarding nurses’ actual workflow. Video recording of nurses’ movements was used to analyze nurses’ multitasking, and focus group interviews were conducted to gain insight into the actual challenges nurses face during work.Methods: This study was a mixed methods research, including both cross-sectional and qualitative approaches. Nurses’ eye movements and work were recorded using an eye tracker. Qualitative data were collected through focus group interviews.Results: Nurses spent an average of 8.1 hours a day for purely nursing work, with most time being spent on administering medication on time (23.6%), followed by documenting nursing care (21.1%), conducting patient surveillance (12.5%), and handover (11.6%). Administration of medication on time and adequate patient surveillance were most frequently multitasked together (22.2%). Over three days, 4,391.7 minutes of nursing activities were performed, and multitasking occurred for 2,156.8 minutes (49.1%). The difficulties experienced by nurses were categorized into three themes and nine sub-categories. The themes were “Being in-between every little thing for patient care,” “Getting swamped by the complexity of symptoms and problems of the patients,” and “Getting interrupted at work too often.”Conclusions: For complex symptom management of patients, nurses perform many tasks at the same time. These nursing activities are complex and comprehensive, being difficult to measure separately. This study provides useful information for improving the nursing work environment and analyzing the types of multitasking done by nurses.

Keywords: Eye Tracking Technology, Focus Group, Nursing, Workflow