How long do nursing staff take to measure and record patients' vital signs observations in hospital? A time-and-motion study.
Chiara Dall'Ora, Peter Griffiths, Joanna Hope and 4 others
PMID 33812297WHAT IT FOUND
Recording one patient's full set of vital signs takes about five minutes when including equipment preparation and interruptions.
Electronic systems offered no time savings over paper charts, and staff grade did not change the duration.
Key findings
01The mean time to complete one set of vital signs, calculated from the total round duration while excluding non-vital-signs related interruptions, was 5 minutes and 1 second.
02Three hospitals using electronic recording systems and one using paper charts showed small differences in time per set, with the paper-chart hospital providing the shortest mean estimate.
03The time taken to perform vital signs sets did not vary meaningfully between registered nurses, healthcare assistants, and student nurses.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Observations were restricted to weekdays between 9 AM and 5 PM, so night shift dynamics (e.g., waking patients, low light) are not represented. The study was conducted only in UK hospitals, which may limit generalisability to healthcare systems with different protocols or staffing models. Staff knew they were being observed, which could have influenced their speed or behaviour, although most reported no change. The researchers did not have access to individual staff seniority or clinical competence, only their occupational group. Arithmetic means were used to facilitate workload calculations, but the data showed some right skew, meaning typical times might differ from the average.
Declared interests
The authors declared no competing interests.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that implementing an electronic vital signs system will reduce nursing workload based on this paper. The study found no evidence of time savings from electronic recording compared to paper charts in these established settings, and the hospital using paper charts actually had the shortest mean time per set.