Nurses' use and delegation of indirect care interventions.

One hundred seventy one nurses were surveyed about their use of 26 indirect care interventions. They indicated that they would not delegate to others the majority of the interventions. Their estimations of the time to perform each intervention were, for the most part, the same, regardless of size of hospital, shift work, and illness level of the patient. The results demonstrate the importance of defining the nurse's indirect care, or role as manager of the care environment role. The indirect care interventions in this study are included in the second edition of the Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC).