title: Emergency department physicians spend only 25% of their working time on direct patient care.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  In modern hospital medicine, there is a growing awareness of the need for efficient and secure -patient care. Authorities seek to improve this by adding requirements for documentation, administrative tasks and standardized patient programmes. However, it is rarely investigated how much time physicians spend on these tasks and it is therefore difficult to assess how changes in the system might affect workflow and thus time efficacy. The aim of this study was to investigate how physicians in the emergency department (ED) of a public hospital in Denmark spend their time. Results were stratified for physicians working in the emergency room (ER) and the admission area of our ED.
  
  
  METHODS
  We used a work sampling approach and observed nine physicians at three-minute -intervals for a total of 137 hours during day shifts. Activities were documented in predefined categories.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Results showed that physicians spent 25% of their time in direct patient contact, 5.8% with indirect patient care, 24% communicating with other staff, 31% documenting their work and 6% on transport. Personal time ac-counted for 5% and other activities for 3%. Interestingly, no -differences in main categories were observed between -physicians admitting patients and physicians working in the fast track of the ER.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our results confirm earlier studies. Furthermore, they suggest that the specialty, the severity of disease and the nature of the contact (in-patient versus out-patient) have only a minor influence on the time spent on various tasks. We speculate whether it is really administrative systems and IT-solutions that influence time distribution in physicians' work.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Not relevant.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01722721.
authors: Department of Internal Medicine, Kolding Hospital, 6000 Kolding, Denmark. lailafuechtbauer@hotmail.com
authors: Laila Maria
authors: LM
authors: Füchtbauer
authors: Birgitte
authors: B
authors: Nørgaard
authors: Christian Backer
authors: CB
authors: Mogensen
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D003718:Denmark; D004282:Documentation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D005791:Patient Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010819:Physician's Role; D010820:Physicians / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013997:Time Factors; D013996:Time and Motion Studies; D016526:Workload