Table 4.

Time spent on individual medication tasks by nurses*

Task	Group	Period	No. tasks	Total time in medication tasks (min)	Mean task time (s)	Frequency of task per hour	% Total medication task time	95% CI		Diff†	p Value
Prepare	Control	Pre	529	430.23	48.80	25.38	34.40	31.49	37.30	−6.61	0.171
medication		Post	415	382.58	55.31	24.74	38.02	33.5	42.53
	Intervention	Pre	190	152.93	48.29	31.14	41.77	35.3	48.24
		Post	513	382.57	44.74	31.20	38.78	34.44	43.12
Check	Control	Pre	117	75.65	38.79	5.61	6.05	5.27	6.82	0.65	0.576
medication		Post	54	44.95	49.94	3.22	4.47	3.52	5.42
	Intervention	Pre	32	19.93	37.38	5.24	5.44	3.78	7.11
		Post	58	44.52	46.05	3.53	4.51	3.56	5.47
Administer	Control	Pre	287	271.55	56.77	13.77	21.71	19.12	24.30	−5.43	0.122
medication		Post	194	211.75	65.49	11.57	21.04	17.68	24.4
	Intervention	Pre	99	94.05	57.00	16.22	25.69	21.26	30.12
		Post	196	193.28	59.17	11.92	19.59	16.48	22.7
Chart	Control	Pre	284	141.10	29.81	13.62	11.28	10.19	12.38	−0.41	0.789
medication		Post	147	66.03	26.95	8.76	6.56	5.57	7.56
	Intervention	Pre	111	50.60	27.35	18.19	13.82	11.44	16.2
		Post	190	85.72	27.07	11.55	8.69	7.6	9.78
Discuss	Control	Pre	200	122.40	36.72	9.59	9.79	8.52	11.06	−1.6	0.712
medication		Post	153	133.80	52.47	9.12	13.29	5.07	21.52
	Intervention	Pre	37	18.82	30.51	6.06	5.14	3.84	6.44
		Post	123	69.48	33.89	7.48	7.04	5.91	8.18
Review	Control	Pre	312	151.88	29.21	14.97	12.14	11.19	13.09	9.99	0.00001
medication		Post	118	46.85	23.82	7.03	4.66	4	5.31
	Intervention	Pre	48	21.77	27.21	7.87	5.95	4.45	7.44
		Post	194	83.48	25.82	11.80	8.46	7.14	9.78

*Excludes low frequency tasks of find order, and clarify or order medication, as these categories had fewer than 10 tasks in each period.

†Percentage difference in change over time (pre vs post) between intervention and control groups, that is, Diff=(P_{Intervention_post}–P_{Intervention_pre})−(P_{Control_post}–P_{Control_pre}).

Bold p values represent significance at p<0.01.