**3.2 Setting**

The researched hospital had 24 specialty departments with approximately 400 beds. Approximately 350 nursing care personnel rendered the services (mostly nursing technicians (n = 224; 66.47%), with a third of them being registered nurses (n = 103; 30.57%) and ten of them (2.97%) being support staff. The hospital dealt with nearly 15,000 prospective payment system episodes in one year. The annual bed occupancy was approximately 80%. This research focused on a medical ward with three units, a 94-bed capacity and nearly five hundred (n = 498) hospitalized patients during the research month. The medical unit participated in this study based on the criteria identified by a hospital expert advisory panel. The unit was selected based on the feasibility of the research process and the availability of participants. The hospital was anonymized at the request of the management of the institution.
