Waiting time in hospitals is often studied from one of two perspectives: a distributed resource in hospitals or a potential steering and measuring factor. In this article, waiting time in an emergency department is examined from a practice and a narrative perspective, placing time at the core of our analysis. Our article explores patient waiting time as a local practice that builds on the temporal structuring that affects how waiting time is regulated by both normal clock time and event time—as interpretative time. We also consider how individual narratives in situated spaces allow for negotiations, but we also present isolated time experiences. The empirical data derive from an organisational ethnographic study of a newly introduced triage system for incoming patients at an emergency department in Denmark. The analysis shows how waiting time is organised in the formal visitation system as ‘colour time’ based on the negotiations of the health-care professional as at the ‘right time’ and as the patient's individual illness experiences with ‘wasting time’. The findings indicate the importance of the unequal relationship between clock time and event time and the different contextual situations affecting the possibilities of organising.

中文翻译：

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挑战“色彩时间”：一种组织医院等待时间的实践和叙事方法

通常从两个角度之一来研究医院的等待时间：医院中的分布式资源或潜在的指导和衡量因素。在本文中，从实践和叙述的角度考察急诊科的等待时间，安排时间是我们分析的核心。我们的文章探讨了患者等待时间作为一种本地实践，它建立在影响等待时间如何受正常时钟时间和事件时间（作为解释时间）调节的时间结构上。我们还考虑了情境空间中的个人叙事如何允许谈判，但我们也呈现了孤立的时间体验。经验数据来自对丹麦急诊科新引入的患者分流系统进行的组织人种学研究。分析显示了在正式探视系统中等待时间是如何组织为“彩色时间”的，这是基于医疗保健专业人员在“正确时间”的协商以及患者个人疾病经历的“浪费时间”。