Participant observation of time allocation, direct patient contact and simultaneous activities in hospital physicians

Table 4 Temporal proportion of physicians' activities on the clinical ward, emergency ward, in the intensive care unit, and in the operating room

	Ward	Emergency Ward	Intensive Care Unit	Operating room
	N = 20	N = 9	N = 3	N = 3
Direct patient contact	19.5	33.1	18.7	74.6
Patient communication	9.7	12.9	2.5	2.8
Diagnostics	4.9	13.7	6.9	.4
Therapy	4.9	6.5	9.2	71.5
Indirect patient contact	70.8	56.4	72.8	18.1
Documentation	35.0	29.2	27.8	3.1
Conversation with staff	19.0	18.2	30.0	7.1
Conversation with others	2.4	1.4	3.6	.1
Organizing	2.6	1.6	1.6	3.3
Meetings	11.8	6.1	9.8	4.6
Other professional activities	1.3	.6
Personal activities	8.4	9.9	8.5	7.2

Note: N Number of observations; numbers in cells: %t percentage of shift's time spent in observed activity.

ISSN: 1472-6963