Try and imagine your workday without your accurate hospital clocks. Maybe you’re a nurse or doctor, or even an intern who doesn’t work full shifts. Regardless of your position at your healthcare facility, chances are your work life would change dramatically if your synchronized hospital clocks one day were no longer on the walls of the building. While you may believe that the clocks on the wall do not a play a big part in your workday, you more than likely use them several times throughout the day—but you might not acknowledge it. Whether you’re the intern recording check-in times, the nurse administering anesthesia, or the doctor in a code blue situation, hospital clocks play an integral part throughout the hospital employee’s workday.

In every hospital, nurses make constant rounds, administering medication to multiple patients on a strict schedule. After one patient receives their medication, the nurse may visit ten or more patients all in different rooms before getting back to that first patient for their second dose of the day. With all the patients to keep track of and different rooms to visit, having hospital clocks that show matching times from room to room is crucial for the nurse. If the clocks waiver in accuracy from one room to another, the nurse could deliver medication at the wrong times—putting patients at risk.

Accurate hospital clocks are important for the simplest functions of an employee’s day as well. For example, taking breaks for a busy hospital employee is a necessity, especially during a ten or twelve hour shift. In retrospect, if an employee takes too long on their break, responsibilities get backed up, and returning to work after a long break can cause headaches and confusion for the nurse or doctor. If wall clocks throughout the hospital are inaccurate, employees can in fact lose track of time and stay over their specified break time. But since the hospital clocks in every part of the building are synchronized to the accurate time, every employee is aware of the amount of time left on their break.

Most hospital employees may assume the accuracy of wall clocks at their place of work does not affect them directly. However, when you take a closer look, you’ll find that you depend on an accurate time display more than you think. The accuracy of hospital clocks are the backbone of the organization within the facility. Without them, nurses, doctors, and even the interns would find their workdays to become much more of a hardship.