ABSTRACT
Objective:
to identify the complexity of the nursing care of inpatient surgical unit patients, using the Perroca patients classification scale.
Method:
a descriptive, cross-sectional study with 546 reviews of 187 patients between October and December of 2012. Data were analyzed using SPSS 18.0 and the Kappa test, to measure interrater agreement.
Results:
a predominance of patients in the categories of semi-intensive (46.5%) and intermediate care (44.0%) was found, with a prevalence of unassisted bath (58.4%) in the total sample, and bed bath (69.3%) in the semi-intensive care patients. The level of agreement between two pairs of raters was considered good.
Conclusion:
the systematic application of the instrument was useful as a complementary measure of the level of patient dependence, and may contribute to the improvement of the working process, refl ecting on management decision-making with regard to nursing workload
Key words:
Personnel Administration, Hospital; Nursing Care; Workload