This study had as objective to establish relations between the work of the nursing in critical units and its repercussion on the health of the workers. A exploratory-descriptive research was carried through, of the qualitative type, that involved 46 workers of nursing (nurses and assistant). Two hospitals had been selected, a public and a philanthropic, being carried through the research in the critical units of soon-attendance, unit of intensive therapy, unit and clinic of hemathoncology and surgical center. The instruments of data collection used had been the half-structuralized interview and the observation of the work in the three turns applied in the period between January and June of 1999. It had as resulted the mapping of diverse express chronic illnesses for these workers, as well as the verbalization of the difficulty of the same ones in to taking care of themselves, assuming the responsibility that fits to them on their health.
Nursing; Management; Nursing Services