Peer-reviewed research
Quantifying and Visualizing Nursing Flowsheet Documentation Burden in Acute and Critical Care
Sarah A. Collins et al., AMIA Annual Symposium Proceedings, 2018
Read the originalRead on October 16, 2026
- What it is
- A 2018 study at one academic center that counted every manual flowsheet entry on four acute care medicine units and two medical ICUs over 12 months. It reports how many entries nurses make per 12-hour shift and cites time-motion studies of nurses' documentation time.
- How much weight it carries
- Peer-reviewed conference proceedings with a large data set, but from a single academic center in 2017. The count of entries shows the volume of charting, not the minutes spent on it. The 19 to 35 percent range is cited from earlier time-motion studies, so check those originals before quoting the range as a finding.
Facts taken from this source
- Time-motion studies cited by Collins and colleagues report that nurses spend between 19 and 35 percent of nursing practice time documenting care.
“reporting that nurses spend between 19% to 35% of nursing practice time documenting care” (Introduction)
- On acute care units at one academic center in 2017, nurses made between 631 and 875 manual flowsheet data entries per 12-hour shift, excluding device data.
“631-875 manual flowsheet data entries per 12-hour shift in acute care” (Results)