Temporal and Spatial Organization in Collaborative Work by Nurses in an Emergency and Critical Care Center

This study describes the work at an emergency and critical care center, focusing on the collaboration of multiple nurses when moving patients from the outpatient department to the ward. This study is an ethnomethodological ethnography based on fieldwork at a hospital and analysis of video data. The patient transport process is temporally organized into three parts: request, confirmation, and transport, and each patient's process is conducted in parallel. The nursing station is the “center of coordination,” where nurses organize their colleagues' activities, achieving the division of labor and enabling them to coordinate multiple time flows.