Identifiering av sjuksköterskors arbetsuppgifter på en infektionsavdelning

The aim of this study was to identify and classify the different professional tasks that infectionnurses do and also to measure the amount of time that each task required. Further it was toidentify the nursing interventions that the nurses performed according to the journal systemVIPS and to examine their breaks from work and their job satisfaction. Data collection wasbased on diaries kept by eleven nurses during the winter/spring 2004. Day and evening shiftson Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday were selected. The nurses noted in their diary,what they did and how much time each activity required.The various tasks of the infection nurses were classified into twelve groups; unit-related (8.8%), instruction (3.6 %), transportation and cleaning (4.2 %), breaks (12.3 %) patient relatedadministration (10.8 %), patient and next-of-kin communication (4.4 %) report/round (13.2%), medication (11.5 %), use of catheters (2.3 %), controls (4.4 %), general nursing (22.7 %)and other treatments (1.8 %). Nurses’ used a total of 71.1 % for patient related work in which10.8 % was patient related administration. All of the nursing interventions according to VIPSwere represented in the classification. Patient and next-of-kin communication could not berelated to just one intervention. In more than 50 % of the sample nurses had not, or onlypartly, taken their break. In 84 % of the sample the nurses stated that they were satisfied withhow they could perform their job.Key words: infection nurses, nurse’s work, working time, nursing interventions, VIPS