Internal medicine residents' time study: paperwork versus patient care.

Background: Multiple factors affect residency education, including duty-hour restrictions and documentation requirements for regulatory compliance. We designed a work sampling study to determine the proportion of time residents spend in structured education, direct patient care, indirect patient care that must be completed by a physician, indirect patient care that 5 be delegated to other health care workers, and personal activities while on an inpatient general practice unit.

Methods: The 3-month study in 2009 involved 14 categorical internal medicine residents who volunteered to use personal digital assistants to self-report their location and primary tasks while on an inpatient general practice unit.