Week 7: Analyzing Time in Motion Study

For this week’s blog, I will be giving my personal view of the Time in Motion study. I have helped the Maimonides Research Team conduct over 15 two hour long studies. As I conduct more and more Time and Motion studies, I am expanding my knowledge of the strengths and flaws of the study. I hope to explain them thoroughly in this blog post.

First off, here are the steps to the study:

– Obtain Consent from the clinician

– Locate the clinician on the day of the study

– Record their tasks for two hours

– Approach the clinician to tell them the study is over

All of these steps are relatively simple. This is great because when studies become to complicated they can become difficult to follow by researchers.

Strengths:

In general, this study and its execution have been very successful. Clinicians are relatively easy to follow around throughout the Emergency Department. Clinicians are usually sitting at their desks or wandering around patients’ beds. Additionally, tasks are easy to record with the Tablet device supplied. All you have to do is click on the category of task and then the exact task. For a clinician who is looking at EKG charts, you would click the diagnostic interpretation category and then the EKG box.

Flaws:

There are very few flaws to the study that I have encountered, but one clear flaw is multitasking. If a clinician is multitasking, only one task can be recorded, not both tasks. For example, if a clinician is analyzing the charts on their computer and talking to a co-worker, only one of these tasks can be recorded. This leads to a small amount of error in the study.

In conclusion, the Time in Motion study is a well-made research study with limited flaws and encompasses what research studies should aim to be.­