Abstract
The purpose of this study was to identify the characteristics of the clients of the visiting nurse (VN) service who make up a large proportion of direct / indirect tasks, and to describe the details of these tasks. The subjects in this study were 95 VN service clients from 19 VN agencies. We conducted a self-recorded time study to investigate how much time the VN station staff spent on indirect/direct tasks.
The clients who held a smaller proportion of indirect tasks had serious care needs with regard to long-term care insurance or medical care insurance without dementia, or other psychiatric disorders, as a primary disorder;the clients who made up a large proportion of the indirect tasks had dementia, or other psychiatric disorders, as a primary disorder. To provide efficient VN services, it is necessary to shorten the labor time by utilizing nurse assistants or developing efficient logistic systems. For the latter type of clients, it is necessary to discuss whether the task of responding to calls by the former type of clients and their families can be delegated to a specific “call center.”
