If you ever find yourself at the beginning of a shift without a wristwatch on, you are guaranteed that
a) you will immediately get a priority one call, making you forget to attach said watch to wrist
b) be busy for the next eight hours and never get back to the station
c) never know what time it is
d) you always have to ask a patient/bystander/colleague what time it is (for documentation)
e) you will get an obstetrics job without any way of timing contractions
f) you will get an overdose job without any way of timing the respiratory rate.
...wait, methinks.
If you have a patient attached to your (loudly beeping) cardiac monitor with a heart rate of 90, instead of counting breaths for 15 seconds and multiplying by 4 (to get to 60 seconds), all you do is count breath sounds with your left hand, whilst counting monitor beeps in your head.
4 breaths every 18 beeps (12 seconds) equals a respiratory rate of 20.
What would we do without the machine that goes 'bing'?
