With my recent surgery, I was interested in the respective roles of doctors and nurses in my recovery and healing process. One way I examined this was through time-lapse photography. During my hospital stay, I set up a camera to capture 1 frame every minute, 24 hours a day. I was in the hospital for 91 hours, and of those 91, the camera recorded for 73 hours (the camera was connected to an old computer, and the hard drive filled up — so there is a gap in the footage).
Of the resulting 4373 frames, in 372 of them, a nurse was present. In 33 of them, a doctor was present. As percentages, these work out to: nurses 8.5%, doctors 0.75%.
Before actually tallying these numbers, my thoughts were that most of the time I was basically unattended — that healing really just meant my body needing time, and not much else from anything external to me. The 0.75% doctor time is in line with this thought (and, in fact, is even lower than I would have predicted). What is surprising to me, however, is the 8.5% nurse time. Now and in retrospect, all the times that nurses came into my room are blurred together and compressed. But this number clarifies for me that there really is a good deal of nurse oversight while staying in a hospital — vital checks, medication administration, IV cleanings, etc.
Below is a 2 minute and 41 second video, playing the 4373 frames back at 30 frames per second.
