Accession Number:

ADA247909

Title:

Development of a Post Anesthesia Care Unit Nursing Patient Classification System: The Indirect Care Component. Executive Summary

Descriptive Note:

Final rept. 1989-1991

Corporate Author:

ARMY HEALTH CARE STUDIES AND CLINICAL INVESTIGATION ACTIVITY FORT SAM HOUSTON TX

Personal Author(s):

• Rea, Ruth E.
• Jennings, Bonnie L.
• Carty, John L.
• Seipp, Karen A.

Report Date:

1991-10-01

Pagination or Media Count:

13.0

Abstract:

The purpose of this study was to determine the Indirect Care time including Nonproductive time expressed as a proportion of Available time this eventually will be combined with Direct Care time and Unavailable for Care time to determine nursing requirements consistent with currently accepted nurse staffing standards methodology. To determine that Indirect Care and Nonproductive proportions for the Army Post Anesthesia Care Unit PACU nursing units, a stratified work sampling design was used. Using weighted stratified sampling, the required sample size of nine sites was selected from the low, medium, and high workload strata proportionate to the number of sites from the total universe that occurred within each stratum. Using 5 accuracy 95 confidence interval length and .65 as an approximation of the Indirect Care time proportion, it was estimated that at least 364 data point per site were required. Actual sample resulted in an accuracy of at least 4.3. Data collection was distributed over a work cycle for PACU, defined as one week of the measured units hours of operation. A minimum of one observation session per hour and a maximum of six observation sessions per hour were scheduled to insure representative sampling of nursing activities throughout the day. Upon analysis of the collected data, it was found that each of the workload stratum-specific proportions was within 3 of the overall combined Indirect Care and Nonproductive time proportions of 76.8.

Descriptors:

• *NURSING
• METHODOLOGY
• OBSERVATION
• ACCURACY
• CYCLES
• TIME
• OPERATION
• DATA ACQUISITION
• STANDARDS
• STRATIFICATION
• NURSES
• REQUIREMENTS
• SAMPLING

Subject Categories:

• Personnel Management and Labor Relations
• Medicine and Medical Research

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE