How Canadian hospitalists spend their time — a work-sampling study within a hospital medicine program in Ontario

Vandad Yousefi. Journal of Clinical Outcomes Management.2011;18(4):159-163. 

Background: Despite significant growth of hospital medicine in Canada over the past decade, little is known about the characteristics of hospitalist pro- grams and how they operate. Objective: To understand the type of activities hos- pitalists perform and the amount of time they spend on performing various tasks. Methods: Over a 2-week period, a trained observer followed 7 hospitalists for 2-hour blocks during 11 shifts. The shifts were chosen to represent various times of day, evening, weekend, and night call shifts. Activities were recorded using data sheets captur- ing 1-minute increments, allowing for recording of simultaneous tasks. Activity categories were defined a priori.