Table 3.

Percentage of shift time that registered nurse spent managing, documenting, and orally communicating about patient care information

	Organization
	A	B	C	D
Number of units in study	2	3	2	1
Shifts/nurses observed	5	7	5	3
Oral communication between RNs (excluding shift report) (%)	2	3	4	13
Oral communication between RNs (shift report) (%)	8	7	5	8
Oral communication with MD (%)	2	1	1	5
Oral communication with other unit staff (not RN or MD) (%)	1	1	4	3
Oral communication with other (non-unit) (%)	1	2	1	7
Total % of RN shift time spent orally communicating	14	14	15	36
Documentation (data entry) (%)	7	13	11	32
Information retrieval (%)	10	6	11	12
Total % of RN shift time spent documenting and retrieving	17	19	22	44
Total % of RN shift time spent managing, documenting, and orally communicating about patient care information	31	33	37	80

A, university hospital; B and C, large community hospitals; D, small community hospital.

MD, medical doctor; RN, registered nurse.