Comparison of Time-and-Motion Observations and Self-Reports to Capture Mobility-Related Nursing Care Activities for Hospitalized Older Adults

Mobility-related nursing care activities are provided infrequently for older adults in inpatient practice. Accurate quantification of these activities is critical to understanding patterns of delivery of nursing care and developing or redesigning work processes to improve patients' outcomes. The current exploratory study compares two continuous data-collecting methods: (a) self-reporting and (b) time-and-motion (TAM) observation of mobility-related nursing care activities for hospitalized older adults. A total of 84 patient-level data were captured by observing 43 8-hour shifts of 14 RNs by trained research observers. RNs continuously documented all types of nursing care activities that occurred during observation shifts. The frequency and duration of mobility activities between data obtained from RNs' self-reports and the TAM observations had poor agreement. Compared to the data from the TAM observations, RNs underreported the frequency of their mobility-related nursing care activities and overreported the duration. The authors' data suggest that a continuous TAM observation method is recommended to obtain accurate data on nurses' provision of mobility-related care activities to older adults.