Underutilized time for health education of hospitalized patients.
BACKGROUND
Our anecdotal observations suggested that hospitalized patients had considerable time during the day when they were not occupied with diagnostic testing or other activities. Accordingly, we sought to quantify the fraction of free time that hospitalized patients had available to participate in health educational activities and if and when during their hospitalization they were interested in participating in these activities and felt capable of doing so.


METHODS
From June 25 through August 15, 2005, randomly selected consenting patients admitted to the Internal Medicine service of an academic safety-net hospital became subjects of a time-motion study that was conducted from admission to discharge or to hospital Day 6. Another randomly selected group received daily surveys, and patients in a third group were interviewed on Day 2 or 3 of their hospitalization.


RESULTS
Time-motion data, surveys, and interviews were obtained from 13, 138, and 15 patients, respectively. Of the 316 patient-hours observed, 71% were classified as downtime. More than 80% of patients either "strongly agreed" or "agreed" that they were interested in and capable of being educated on all days of their hospitalization. The themes generated from the interviews included the desire to know more about self-management, prevention of disease recurrence or progression, and their primary illness.


CONCLUSIONS
Adult medical inpatients have considerable time and strong motivation to participate in health educational activities throughout their hospitalization. The current structure for educating hospitalized patients should be supplemented to take these findings into account.
Division of Hospital Medicine, Department of Medicine, Denver Health Medical Center, Denver, Colorado 80204-4507, USA. eugene.chu@dhha.org
Eugene S
ES
Chu
David
D
Hakkarinen
Crystal
C
Evig
Stacey
S
Page
Angela
A
Keniston
Miriam
M
Dickinson
Richard K
RK
Albert
D003710:Demography; D005260:Female; D006739:Hospital Administration; D006801:Humans; D007297:Inpatients; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000458:organization & administration*; D017060:Patient Satisfaction