SHBC1420

Z.R.TAN¹, L.F. LIN¹, S.Y. LIM¹, W.T. CHEN¹ 

Tan Tock Seng Hospital¹ 

Community Health Team (CHT) has performed a range of services to support care between hospital to home. However little has been studied on their scope of work. The aim is to gather insights on the activities that the staff spent their time in a workday. These insights would then lead to the implementation of strategies to improve staff workload.

A time and motion direct observation study was conducted on a stratified sample of three therapists, four nurses and two doctors over a 3-months period between February to April 2021. The study covers one full working week of each staff. The activities are categorised using the NHG Community Nursing roles: Care, Coordination, Strengthening, and Sensing. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics.

Majority of the staffs’ time was spent on Care (both “Direct Care” and “Care Related”) activities, averaging 69.2% across professions. The time spent on direct care by the observed staff were lower, ranged from 26.9-30.6% across professions as compared to care-related activities (30.5-50.6%). At specific tasks level, “Direct Care” activities such as home visits could differ more than an hour depending on the services required by the patient (30-139mins) within the same profession.

This study has provided a greater understanding of the proportion of time dedicated to the different modes of care provision by the CHT staff, allowing a more accurate assessment of their workload. In a team-based care delivery model, such estimation may be challenging as the duration of the care activities was affected by number of professionals.