Final answer:
The inpatient census should be taken at a consistent time daily to ensure accuracy in patient counts. While the exact second may vary, the general time should remain the same each day.
Step-by-step explanation:
The time for taking the inpatient census must always be consistent. This consistency is key to obtaining accurate data for determining the number of patients in a hospital at a particular time. For instance, if the designated census time is 5 seconds before noon, it should be taken exactly at this time every day.
In practice, the exact time may vary slightly around a consistent census time, such as 0.1 seconds before noon or 5 seconds after noon, but the intention is to count the inpatients at nearly the same moment each day to ensure the count is reliable and comparable from day to day.