How Much Time Do Nurses Spend Teaching Cancer Patients

As patients live longer and hospital stays grow shorter the demand for nurses to teach effectively and efficiently increases. Given the current nursing shortage, nurses have less time available to do teaching. As a result, hospitals will have to be creative in providing quality education in a cost-effective manner. A descriptive study was undertaken to establish a baseline on how much time nurses actually spend teaching. Seven to ten consecutive admissions on each inpatient unit for a total of one hundred twenty-one patients were enrolled into the study during a seven-day period. All patient/family teaching was documented until the patient was discharged or transferred. Data were collected on a total of 825 days of patient hospitalization. The average teaching time per patient per day (pppd) was 16.6 min. This teaching time amounts to 128 h a day and costs the center $2355 in nurses hourly wages each day or $859,657 per year. This study has established that nurses spend a significant amount of time teaching and has estimated its cost. It provides a baseline for making comparisons in teaching methodologies. Patient Education closed circuit television (CCTV) may be an alternative to one-on-one teaching and decrease the amount of time the nurse spends in repetitive teaching.