NURSING WORKLOAD IN A CARDIAC INTENSIVE CARE UNIT AND ASSOCIATED CLINICAL FACTORS

The objective of this study was to identify the nursing workload in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit and to verify the association of this variable according to demographic and clinical patient's characteristics. The sample consisted of 100 patients hospitalized between August and September of 2006 in a Cardiac Intensive Care Unit of a private hospital in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The Nursing Activities Score, Simplified Acute Physiologic Score II, and the Logistic Organ Dysfunction System were used to measure the nursing workload, severity, and organic dysfunction, respectively. The nursing workload was 66.60% which is equivalent to 5.30 work hours during an eight hour shift. Except for the length of stay in the Intensive Care Unit, which showed a moderate correlation with the workload, there was no association with the other analyzed variables. An expansion of the sample to provide generalized conclusions is highly recommended.