Improving the quality of registered nurses' working time use data.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To examine the advantages and disadvantages of external observation and self-reporting methods in investigating registered nurses' working time use in order to improve the quality of working time use data.

BACKGROUND: External observation and self-reporting methods are the most widely used approaches for studying nurses' working time use in observational work sampling studies, but there is scarce information of the data collection procedures and results in the same research context and in the same study.

DESIGN: A cross-sectional quantitative study with a structured data collection instrument developed for this study. The same instrument was used in both data collections.

METHODS: Data were collected from six inpatient units at two Finnish tertiary hospitals in autumn 2013 over two consecutive weeks. All registered nurses (n = 95) from two internal medical units, two surgical units and two psychiatric units participated in this study.

RESULTS: Statistically significantly divergent information was produced by the two data collection methods in the major nursing categories of value-adding care and non-value-adding work as well as in each of the seven nursing subcategories.

CONCLUSIONS: External observation and self-reporting gave an overall picture of how registered nurses are using their working time, and both methods were useful in examining registered nurses' working time use when taking into account the advantages and disadvantages of these methods. The deviations between the results improved the quality of data because both methods address recognised shortcomings of the other.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: This research promotes awareness of the divergent study results by investigating registered nurses' working time use with these two different data collection methods. In future, it would be wise to aim for more comparable data by applying external observation and self-reporting techniques simultaneously.