COST OF NURSING ASSISTENCE IN INTENSIVE-CARE UNIT OF AN UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL

Objectives: To estimate intervention's cost of nursing care in ICU patients of a University Hospital, identify the average time of nursing care to patients in the ICU. Method: This is an exploratory, descriptive, prospective field study. Inclusion criteria were considered patients aged over 21 years and who were hospitalized for at least 24 hours in the unit. From the data collected and quantified, we used the expression: "CD/d = 0.35 x N-D x S + 0.35 x N-M x S x k". Results: The costs of nursing care represent a significant share in the budget of any hospital and discrepancies exist between costs day service and night service, the largest value observed in the average cost of day service. One way to solving this problem could be an optimization routine of nursing, both in assisting with the adoption of the Nursing Care Systematization (NCS), as in the work process, through the formulation of protocols for this type of customer. Conclusion: This study enabled the development of a methodology for calculating costs, which proved to be valid for the practical application and to contribute to decreasing the shortage of studies in this area.