The different types of nursing
interventions were identified. The amount of nursing
interventions was measured by the frequency and sum
of time spent for direct interventions during the hospitalization.
It is expected that, assuming a nursing
intervention is beneficial, the status of the patient
would improve as the amount of intervention delivered
increases. Representing a nursing intervention by
a dichotomous value (1 = intervention provided;
0 = intervention not provided) treats the dose of intervention
as equal for all those who receive an interven-tion at least once and makes it impossible to specify
nursing intervention dosages to maximize benefits
from nursing interventions while minimizing costs
(Reed et al. 2007). As the amount of indirect nursing
time (123.34 minutes/day) was constant across
patients in the data, indirect nursing interventions
(e.g. administrative/clerical report, housekeeping,
transfer to the unit and communication report) were
not included in subsequent analyses.