Work tasks and definitions
| Work task | Definition |
| Direct care | All tasks directly involved with patient care, includes direct communication with patient and/or family |
| Indirect care | All tasks indirectly related to patient care |
| Find med record | Searching for a patient's medical record |
| Find x-ray/scan | Searching for a patient's x-ray or scan |
| Other indirect | All other indirect tasks (eg, reviewing results, planning care) |
| All medication tasks | All tasks associated with medication, includes preparation, administration, documentation, discussion and clarification) |
| Find order | Searching for medication charts/medical records with drug order |
| Prescribe drug | Ordering a drug (includes discharge scripts, verbal orders) |
| Transcribe order | Copying medication orders from one med chart to another |
| Prepare drug | All activity around drug preparation and clean-up |
| Clarify | Clarifying a drug order (with other people or other sources) |
| Check drug | Checking and co-signing of a drug given by another staff member |
| Admin | Giving medication(s) to a patient |
| Chart | Documenting the drug administration details |
| Discuss | Talking about a drug with health professional and/or patient and/or relative |
| Review | Looking over drug orders as part of planning care |
| Documentation | Any recording of patient information on paper or computer, excludes medication documentation |
| Discharge summaries | Specifically documenting discharge summaries using an electronic discharge summary system at this site |
| Other documentation | All other non-medication-related documentation |
| Professional communication | All non-medication-related communication with another health professional, includes meetings, requests for medical consults and discussion around planning care |
| Administrative | Any administrative activity that is not related to direct or indirect individual patient care—for example, employment issues, bed allocations |
| In transit | Time between tasks and between patients |
| Supervision/education | Supervising others, including supervising students as well as attending education sessions |
| Social activities | All non-work activity or communication, as well as tea and meal breaks |
| Pager | Whenever the pager alerts, this is recorded as an interruption; only includes time taken to look at and turn off pager |