Marga Hoogendoorn

60 Excluded nursing activities The following three NAS nursing activities occurred less than 10 times in all measurements and were therefore excluded from the analysis at activity level: care of a pulmonary or left atrial catheter, cardiopulmonary resuscitation and specific interventions in the ICU (endotracheal intubation, insertion of a pacemaker, cardioversion, endoscopy, emergency surgery in the previous 24 hours, gastric lavage). Furthermore, we did not specifically measure intravenous replacement of large fluid losses and treatment of metabolic acidosis/alkalosis, since these two nursing activities usually fall under the category bedside activities. Total patient time and times per NAS item The median converted NAS time per patient (202.6 minutes; IQR 155.0-241.2 minutes) was significantly higher (p<0.001) compared with the observed time per patient (144.3 minutes; IQR 81.3 – 168.4 minutes), see figure 1 . A Pearson’s correlation of R=0.59 (R 2 =0.35) was found between the total converted NAS time and the total observed time per patient (table 3) . Figure 1. The correlation between the total converted NAS time in minutes and the total observed time in minutes per patient. A full nursing shift is 480 minutes. Blue diagonal shows equal converted and observed time per patient