Journal of clinical nursing
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1. In this cost-conscious climate there is a need to make explicit and justify the rationale to support direct patient contact by Registered Nurses. The current shortage of qualified nursing staff means that it is essential that experience and expertise be utilized to the benefit of patients and the service as a whole. 2. ⋯ The results demonstrate that nurses working in this general intensive care unit spent 85% of their time in activities associated with providing direct patient care. However, up to 6% of time was spent undertaking non-nursing duties, and analysis of unit activity provided data to support an increase in the establishment and review of the shift patterns of health care assistants. 5. The findings of the study indicate that nurses in charge of shifts spend 24.1% of their time in managerial and administrative activity; this reduces the amount of time spent in direct patient contact.
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1. The nursing handover is a key activity for nurses working in acute hospital wards in the NHS. Little scholarly attention has been paid to the use nurses make of the information exchanged during nursing handover or how certain features of the nursing handover might impact positively or negatively on patient outcomes. 2. ⋯ The second was as a source of information on which to base their nursing decisions and actions. 5. It is proposed that some qualified nurses need help with the emotional labour of caring for dying people and that the nursing handover can assist in emotional adaptation, so enabling the management of troubling thoughts or feelings experienced in the course of caring for someone who is dying. 6. The role of the nursing handover in providing emotional support for nurses has been little studied and is a potentially useful area of future research, especially if it can be related to patient experiences and outcomes.