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Nursing Activities Score and workload in the intensive care unit of a university hospital

Abstracts

Objective:

The nursing workload consists of the time spent by the nursing staff to perform the activities for which they are responsible, whether directly or indirectly related to patient care. The aim of this study was to evaluate the nursing workload in an adult intensive care unit at a university hospital using the Nursing Activities Score (NAS) instrument.

Methods:

A longitudinal, prospective study that involved the patients admitted to the intensive care unit of a university hospital between March and December 2008. The data were collected daily to calculate the NAS, the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE II), the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) and the Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System (TISS-28) of patients until they left the adult intensive care unit or after 90 days of hospitalization. The level of significance was set at 5%.

Results:

In total, 437 patients were evaluated, which resulted in an NAS of 74.4%. The type of admission, length of stay in the intensive care unit and the patients' condition when leaving the intensive care unit and hospital were variables associated with differences in the nursing workload. There was a moderate correlation between the mean NAS and APACHE II severity score (r=0.329), the mean organic dysfunction SOFA score (r=0.506) and the mean TISS-28 score (r=0.600).

Conclusion:

We observed a high nursing workload in this study. These results can assist in planning the size of the staff required. The workload was influenced by clinical characteristics, including an increased workload required for emergency surgical patients and patients who died.

Workload; Nursing, team; Severity of illness index; Hospitals, university; Intensive care units


Objetivo:

A carga de trabalho de enfermagem é constituída pelo tempo dispendido pela equipe de enfermagem para realizar as atividades de sua responsabilidade, relacionadas direta ou indiretamente ao atendimento do paciente. O objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar a carga de trabalho de enfermagem em uma unidade de terapia intensiva adulto de hospital universitário com o uso do instrumento Nursing Activities Score (NAS).

Métodos:

Estudo longitudinal, prospectivo, envolvendo pacientes admitidos na unidade de terapia intensiva de um hospital universitário no período de março a dezembro de 2008. Foram coletados dados para o cálculo do NAS, do Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE II), do Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) e do Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System (TISS-28), diariamente até a saída da unidade de terapia intensiva adulto ou 90 dias de internação. O nível de significância adotado foi de 5%.

Resultados:

Foram avaliados 437 pacientes, resultando em NAS de 74,4%. O tipo de internação, tempo de permanência na unidade de terapia intensiva e condição de saída do paciente da unidade de terapia intensiva e do hospital foram variáveis associadas a diferenças na carga de trabalho da enfermagem. Houve correlação moderada do NAS médio com o escore de gravidade APACHE II (r=0,329), com o escore de disfunção orgânica SOFA médio (r=0,506) e com o TISS-28 médio (r=0,600).

Conclusão:

Encontramos elevada carga de trabalho de enfermagem no estudo. Esse resultado pode subsidiar planejamento para dimensionamento da equipe. A carga de trabalho sofreu influência de caraterísticas clínicas, sendo observado aumento do trabalho nos pacientes cirúrgicos de urgência e nos não sobreviventes.

Carga de trabalho; Equipe de enfermagem; Índice de gravidade de doença; Hospitais universitários; Unidades de terapia intensiva


INTRODUCTION

The nursing workload in hospitals has been discussed globally because of its implications on the quality of patient care.( 1Conishi RM, Gaidzinski RR. Nursing activities score (NAS) como instrumento para medir carga de trabalho de enfermagem em UTI adulto. Rev Esc Enferm USP. 2007; 41(3): 346-54. ) In intensive care units (ICU), concern is increasing because of the effect of new technologies on care, the changing profile of critically ill patients and the need for skilled labor.( 1Conishi RM, Gaidzinski RR. Nursing activities score (NAS) como instrumento para medir carga de trabalho de enfermagem em UTI adulto. Rev Esc Enferm USP. 2007; 41(3): 346-54. )

In an ICU, nurses note daily whether critical patients will require prolonged assistance regarding the performance of routine procedures both upon admission and during their stay because organ instability can occur at any time over the course of the patients' stays in these units.( 2Fernandes HS, Pulzi Júnior SA, Costa Filho R. Qualidade em terapia intensiva. Rev Bras Clin Med. 2010; 8(1): 37-45. ) This variability challenges the balance between an adequate delivery of care and the rational use of resources.( 3Lima MK, Tsukamoto R, Fugulin FM. Aplicação do Nursing Activities Score em pacientes de alta dependência de enfermagem. Texto Contexto Enferm. 2008; 17(4): 638-46. )

Nursing workload consists of the time spent by nursing staff to perform the activities for which they are responsible, whether directly or indirectly related to patient care. These activities can change depending on the patient's degree of dependency, the complexity of the disease, the characteristics of the institution, work processes, the physical layout and the nature of the professional team.( 4Panunto MR, Guirardello EB. Carga de trabalho de enfermagem em Unidade de Terapia Intensiva de um hospital de ensino. Acta Paul Enferm. 2012; 25(1): 96-101. )

The nursing workload also includes other factors in which certain activities unrelated to the patient or his/her family become a component of the responsibilities of nurses during their work shifts. These activities include nursing education (monitoring students, training staff) and organizational and administrative work.( 5Gonçalves LA, Padilha KG. Fatores associados à carga de trabalho de enfermagem em Unidade de Terapia Intensiva. Rev Esc Enferm USP. 2007; 41(4): 645-52. ) Thus, the nursing workload is the total of all of the needs that must be fulfilled relative to the nursing staff available to fulfill them, which ultimately translates into time of care.

The various studies that have described nursing workloads have shown that the demographic and clinical characteristics of severely ill patients were not associated with differences in measuring the nursing work.( 1Conishi RM, Gaidzinski RR. Nursing activities score (NAS) como instrumento para medir carga de trabalho de enfermagem em UTI adulto. Rev Esc Enferm USP. 2007; 41(3): 346-54. , 6Miranda DR, Nap R, de Rijk A, Schaufeli W, Iapichino G; TISS Working Group. Nursing activities score. Crit Care Med. 2003; 31(2): 374-82.

Nogueira LS, Sousa RM, Padilha KG, Koike KM. Características clínicas e gravidade de pacientes internados em UTIs públicas e privadas. Texto Contexto Enferm. 2012; 21(1): 59-67.
- 8Kiekkas P, Brokalaki H, Manolis E, Samios A, Skartsani C, Baltopoulos G. Patient severity as an indicator of nursing workload in the intensive care unit. Nurs Crit Care. 2007; 12(1): 34-41. ) When evaluating nursing work in terms of patient severity, some authors reported that the Nursing Activities Score (NAS) at admission was associated with longer stays in the ICU.( 6Miranda DR, Nap R, de Rijk A, Schaufeli W, Iapichino G; TISS Working Group. Nursing activities score. Crit Care Med. 2003; 31(2): 374-82. , 7Nogueira LS, Sousa RM, Padilha KG, Koike KM. Características clínicas e gravidade de pacientes internados em UTIs públicas e privadas. Texto Contexto Enferm. 2012; 21(1): 59-67. ) In addition, there was an association between mortality and NAS, thus showing that patients who did not survive resulted in an increased nursing workload.( 8Kiekkas P, Brokalaki H, Manolis E, Samios A, Skartsani C, Baltopoulos G. Patient severity as an indicator of nursing workload in the intensive care unit. Nurs Crit Care. 2007; 12(1): 34-41. )

To optimize financial resources and to properly allocate human resources in an ICU, thus prioritizing quality and safety of care, ICU performance must be evaluated using prognostic indices and by measuring the nursing workload. The latter is important because among the healthcare teams working in ICU, it is the nursing staff that spends the most time at a patient's bedside, performing procedures and therapeutic interventions.( 9Gonçalves LA. Segurança do paciente em Unidade de Terapia Intensiva: carga de trabalho de enfermagem e sua relação com a ocorrência de eventos adversos e incidentes [tese]. São Paulo: Escola de Enfermagem da Universidade de São Paulo; 2011. ) Thus, the aim of this study was to evaluate the nursing workload in an adult ICU of a university hospital using the NAS instrument and to analyze the effects that demographic and clinical characteristics have on their workload.

METHODS

This study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the Universidade Estadual de Londrina/Hospital Universitário Regional Norte do Paraná based on opinion 217/07 from October 24, 2007, and the need for informed consent was waived.

The present study was a longitudinal, prospective study involving patients admitted to the adult ICU of the Hospital Universitário of the Universidade Estadual de Londrina between March 10, 2008 and December 31, 2008. The Hospital Universitário is directly affiliated with the Universidade Estadual de Londrina. This public, tertiary and large hospital has 316 beds. The clinical-surgical ICU has 17 beds, including 10 beds that are designated for surgical inpatients and clinical patients not infected with multi-drug resistant bacteria. The remaining seven beds are intended for patients who may be infected with and/or colonized with multi-drug resistant bacteria who require isolation. The adult ICU nursing staff consists of one nurse for every ten beds and a nursing technician for every two beds.

The sample included all patients admitted consecutively to the ICU during the study period. Patients under 18 years old or whose stay in the ICU was less than 24 hours were excluded. For patients who had more than one ICU admission (readmission), only the first admission was considered for the analysis. The patients transferred from the ICU to another hospital/service were considered lost in the follow-up.

To characterize the patients, identification and ICU stay data were collected. The identification data included initials, gender, date of birth, clinic, medical record number and service number. The data collected on adult ICU stay included the date and time of admission, origin (ward, emergency room or surgical center), type of admission (medical, elective surgery or emergency surgery), admission diagnosis, date and time of discharge from the ICU, condition at discharge from the ICU (alive or deceased) and condition at discharge from the hospital (alive or deceased).

The institution where the study was performed routinely applies the Therapeutic Intervention Score System (TISS 28) to measure and characterize the nursing workload in the ICU, in addition to the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE II) severity score and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) organ dysfunction score to characterize patient severity. The routine data were evaluated for the study patients and added to the data collected for the NAS. These data were obtained daily from the patient's medical records. The data were collected until the patient was discharged from the adult ICU or until the patient reached 90 days of hospitalization.

The NAS instrument is divided into 7 major categories and 23 activities. These categories include basic activities (monitoring and controls, laboratory tests, medication, hygiene procedures, drain care, mobilization and positioning, support and care for families and patients and administrative and managerial tasks), ventilatory support, cardiovascular support, renal support, neurological support, metabolic support and specific interventions.( 6Miranda DR, Nap R, de Rijk A, Schaufeli W, Iapichino G; TISS Working Group. Nursing activities score. Crit Care Med. 2003; 31(2): 374-82. )

To evaluate the nursing workload in the adult ICU, the TISS-28( 1010 Miranda DR, de Rijk A, Schaufeli W. Simplified Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System: the TISS-28 items-results from a multicenter study. Crit Care Med. 1996; 24(1): 64-73. ) and NAS instruments were applied.( 6Miranda DR, Nap R, de Rijk A, Schaufeli W, Iapichino G; TISS Working Group. Nursing activities score. Crit Care Med. 2003; 31(2): 374-82. ) In applying these instruments, some observations were considered: a 24-hr period was considered from 7 am until 7 am the following day; on the first day of hospitalization, the activities performed were computed from the time of ICU admission until 7 am the following day; on the day of discharge, interventions were considered from their last application until the time of discharge; and items that did not occur during the application of the instrument received a score of zero.

In this study, the SOFA, TISS-28 and NAS scores were initially measured on the day of ICU admission, designated as SOFA-admission, TISS-28-admission and NAS-admission, respectively.

The APACHE II score( 1111 Knaus WA, Draper EA, Wagner DP, Zimmerman JE. Apache II: a severity of disease classification system. Crit Care Med. 1985; 13(10): 818-29. ) was collected to characterize the study population based on patient severity and mortality risk. The calculation for this score was based on data obtained over the initial 24 hours following admission to the ICU. The definition of chronic disease followed the criteria described by this score.

To detect changes in organ function, all patients received a SOFA evaluation score,( 1212 Vincent JL, de Mendonça A, Cantraine F, Moreno R, Takala J, Suter PM, et al. Use of the SOFA score to assess the incidence of organ dysfunction/failure in intensive care units: results of a multicenter, prospective study. Working group on "sepsis-related problems" of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine. Crit Care Med. 1998; 26(11): 1793-800. ) which included an assessment of the six major organ systems: respiratory, renal, hepatic, coagulation, cardiovascular and central nervous. Organ dysfunction was quantified using scores ranging from zero to four, and the worst values over that 24-hr period for each organ were used.

Statistical analysis

Continuous quantitative variables were described after assessing whether they were normally distributed. For this evaluation, the Shapiro-Wilks test was used. For variables with a normal distribution, the means and standard deviations were calculated. The nominal categorical variables were described using the absolute and relative frequencies (%) of each variable.

The continuous variables were compared and correlated after assessing whether they were normally distributed. For normally distributed data, Student's t-test was used for comparisons between two groups, and analysis of variance was used for comparisons between more than two groups. For data with a non-normal distribution, a Mann-Whitney test was used for comparisons between two groups, and a Kruskal-Wallis test was used for comparisons between more than two groups.

Pearson's correlation coefficients were used to assess the correlations between the continuous variables. To analyze the magnitude of the correlations, the following reference values were adopted: weak <0.30; moderate 0.30 to 0.60; strong >0.60 to 0.99 and perfect=1.00. The level of significance was set at 5%.

RESULTS

During the study period, 622 patients were admitted to the ICU, and 19 patients were excluded from the study because they were under 18 years of age; 35 readmissions and 131 patients who remained in the ICU for less than 24 hours were also excluded. None of the patients were transferred to another hospital/service. Thus, a total of 437 patients were evaluated.

The demographic and clinical characteristics of these 437 patients evaluated using the NAS during the study period are shown in table 1.

Table 1
The clinical and demographic characteristics of patients admitted to the intensive care unit

The results of the comparisons between the mean NAS according to the demographic and clinical characteristics of the patients are described in table 2, which shows that the type of admission, length of stay in the ICU and condition at discharge from the ICU and hospital were the variables associated with differences in nursing workload.

Table 2
Comparisons of the nursing workload (Nursing Activities Score) according to the demographic and clinical variables of the patients admitted to the intensive care unit

The analysis in table 3 shows that the results generated for the correlation between the mean NAS-Admission with the APACHE II, mean SOFA-Admission and mean TISS-28-Admission were significant (p<0.001). There was also a moderate correlation in the analysis of these scores.

Table 3
Correlations between the mean Nursing Activities Score and Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II scores, Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System scores and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment scores of patients admitted to the intensive care unit

DISCUSSION

This study evaluated the nursing workload described by the NAS for patients admitted to a medical-surgical ICU. The high mean NAS observed in the study reflects that each patient required more than half of the nursing workload, thus suggesting an ideal proportion of one nurse professional per ICU bed.

This issue is of fundamental interest because an oversized staff results in higher costs.( 5Gonçalves LA, Padilha KG. Fatores associados à carga de trabalho de enfermagem em Unidade de Terapia Intensiva. Rev Esc Enferm USP. 2007; 41(4): 645-52. ) Conversely, smaller teams tend to impair the quality of care, interfering with patient safety,( 9Gonçalves LA. Segurança do paciente em Unidade de Terapia Intensiva: carga de trabalho de enfermagem e sua relação com a ocorrência de eventos adversos e incidentes [tese]. São Paulo: Escola de Enfermagem da Universidade de São Paulo; 2011. ) prolonging hospitalization and generating higher costs.( 1313 Queijo AF, Padilha KG. Instrumento de medida da carga de trabalho de enfermagem em Unidade de Terapia Intensiva: Nursing Activities Score (N.A.S). Rev Paul Enferm. 2004; 23:114-22. )

The indices that measure the nursing workload provide an adequate assessment of the complexity of the patient, the nursing time required to provide care, the number of nurses necessary per shift and the material resources required.( 1Conishi RM, Gaidzinski RR. Nursing activities score (NAS) como instrumento para medir carga de trabalho de enfermagem em UTI adulto. Rev Esc Enferm USP. 2007; 41(3): 346-54. ) The index most described in the literature is a simplified version of the TISS-28.( 1212 Vincent JL, de Mendonça A, Cantraine F, Moreno R, Takala J, Suter PM, et al. Use of the SOFA score to assess the incidence of organ dysfunction/failure in intensive care units: results of a multicenter, prospective study. Working group on "sepsis-related problems" of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine. Crit Care Med. 1998; 26(11): 1793-800. ) Despite the importance of this instrument, its practical application showed structural failures for fully measuring nursing workloads because the activities related to indirect patient care, such as organizational tasks, were not included in its composition.( 1414 Morris R, MacNeela P, Scott A, Treacy P, Hyde A. Reconsidering the conceptualization of nursing workload: literature review. J Adv Nurs. 2007; 57(5): 463-71. )

The NAS was developed by Miranda et al.( 6Miranda DR, Nap R, de Rijk A, Schaufeli W, Iapichino G; TISS Working Group. Nursing activities score. Crit Care Med. 2003; 31(2): 374-82. ) and has been increasingly used in the ICU. This score includes a large number of activities performed by the nursing staff,( 1515 Reis Miranda D, Jegers M. Monitoring costs in the ICU: a search for a pertinent methodology. Acta Anaesthesiol Scand. 2012; 56(9): 1104-13. ) primarily in the category "basic activities", with greater detail for the items "monitoring and control", "hygiene procedures" and "mobilization and positioning the patient" and the inclusion of items for "support and care for family members/patients" and "administrative and managerial tasks".

The score generated using the NAS scoring system directly expresses the percentage of time spent by the nursing staff caring for critically ill patients and can range from zero to 176.8%,( 6Miranda DR, Nap R, de Rijk A, Schaufeli W, Iapichino G; TISS Working Group. Nursing activities score. Crit Care Med. 2003; 31(2): 374-82. ) i.e., it represents how much of a staff member's working time was required by a patient over the last 24 hours. Thus, a score of 100 points indicates that a patient required 100% of the nurse's time in the past 24 hours.( 1313 Queijo AF, Padilha KG. Instrumento de medida da carga de trabalho de enfermagem em Unidade de Terapia Intensiva: Nursing Activities Score (N.A.S). Rev Paul Enferm. 2004; 23:114-22. ) Each point in the NAS is equivalent to providing 14.4 minutes of nursing care.( 1Conishi RM, Gaidzinski RR. Nursing activities score (NAS) como instrumento para medir carga de trabalho de enfermagem em UTI adulto. Rev Esc Enferm USP. 2007; 41(3): 346-54. )

With respect to the study population, the demographic and clinical characteristics of our patients were comparable to recent studies conducted on critically ill patients, although our average age was slightly higher compared to that of a study performed in a teaching hospital( 1616 Brito AP, Guirardello EB. Carga de trabalho de enfermagem em uma unidade de internação. Rev Latinoam Enferm. 2011; 19(5): 1139-45. ) but similar to that of a study conducted in an ICU of a large hospital.( 1717 Leite IR, Silva GR, Padilha KG. Nursing Activities Score e demanda de trabalho de enfermagem em terapia intensiva. Acta Paul Enferm. 2012; 25(6): 837-43. ) The mean APACHE II scores were higher in our study compared to those obtained in a study conducted in a general ICU of a university hospital.( 1818 Oliveira AB, Dias OM, Mello MM, Araújo S, Dragosavac D, Nucci A, et al. Fatores associados à maior mortalidade e tempo de internação prolongado em uma unidade de terapia intensiva de adultos. Rev Bras Ter Intensiva. 2010; 22(3): 250-6. ) The balanced ratio between the surgical and clinical patients observed in our study was similar to that in a study conducted in a gastroenterology unit( 1919 Panunto MR, Guirardello EB. Carga de trabalho de enfermagem em uma unidade de gastroenterologia. Rev Latinoam Enferm. 2009; 17(6): 1009-14. ) but differed from the data reported in other studies, including a reported predominance of surgical patients in a study conducted in a ICU of a large hospital( 1717 Leite IR, Silva GR, Padilha KG. Nursing Activities Score e demanda de trabalho de enfermagem em terapia intensiva. Acta Paul Enferm. 2012; 25(6): 837-43. ) and a predominance of clinical patients in a study that included elderly patients.( 2020 Sousa CR, Gonçalves LA, Toffoleto MC, Leão K, Padilha KG. Preditores da demanda de trabalho de enfermagem para idosos internados em unidade de terapia intensiva. Rev Latinoam Enferm. 2008; 16(2): 218-23. )

In a recent study, Nogueira et al. described differences in how the NAS was measured between patients treated in public and private institutions, in which patients in public institutions had a higher mean NAS at admission (68.1) compared to that of patients in private institutions (56.0).( 2121 Nogueira LS, Koike KM, Sardinha DS, Padilha KG, Sousa RM. Carga de trabalho de enfermagem em unidades de terapia intensiva públicas e privadas. Rev Bras Ter Intensiva. 2013; 25(3): 225-32. ) Our patients were admitted to a public hospital and had a high mean NAS score at admission (87.5), which was consistent with the data in the literature.

Few studies( 2222 Dias MC. Aplicação do Nursing Activities Score - N.A.S. - como instrumento de medida de carga de trabalho de enfermagem em UTI cirúrgica cardiológica [dissertação]. São Paulo: Escola de Enfermagem da Universidade de São Paulo; 2006. , 2323 Ducci AJ, Zanei SS, Whitaker IY. Carga de trabalho de enfermagem para quantificar proporção profissional de enfermagem/paciente em UTI cardiológica. Rev Esc Enferm USP. 2008; 42(4): 673-80. ) attained mean NAS scores similar to our data, which indicates an increased demand for nursing care. Resolution 26 of the National Health Surveillance Agency (Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária - ANVISA)( 2424 Brasil. Ministério da Saúde. Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária. Resolução - RDC nº 26, de 11 de maio de 2012. Altera a Resolução RDC nº 07, de 24 de fevereiro de 2010, que dispõe sobre os requisitos mínimos para funcionamento de Unidades de Terapia Intensiva e dá outras providências. Diário Oficial da União, Brasília, 14 mai. 2012. Seção 1, Edição 92, p. 170. ) of May 11, 2012, which established the minimum operation requirements for an ICU and made other provisions, recommended a ratio of one nurse technician for every two beds and a ratio of one clinical nurse for every ten beds or a fraction thereof for each work shift. This proportion of staff per bed may be considered inadequate for the care of patients in this study because a high nursing workload can affect the safety and quality of care provided to patients.

The workload assessed by the overall mean of the NAS over the course of hospitalization was not influenced by differences in demographic characteristics, such as gender, age range or patient origin. These results were similar to those reported in other studies( 2525 Coelho FU, Queijo AF, Andolhe R, Gonçalves LA, Padilha KG. Carga de trabalho de enfermagem em unidade de terapia intensiva de cardiologia e fatores clínicos associados. Texto Contexto Enferm. 2011; 20(4): 735-41. , 2626 Padilha KG, de Sousa RM, Queijo AF, Mendes AM, Reis Miranda D. Nursing Activities Score in the intensive care unit: analysis of the related factors. Intensive Crit Care Nurs. 2008; 24(3): 197-204. ) that evaluated the performance of the NAS in patients admitted to an ICU.

The patient admitted for post-operative care following emergency surgery required a higher workload in our study, which was a result that slightly differed from other reports in the literature.( 2525 Coelho FU, Queijo AF, Andolhe R, Gonçalves LA, Padilha KG. Carga de trabalho de enfermagem em unidade de terapia intensiva de cardiologia e fatores clínicos associados. Texto Contexto Enferm. 2011; 20(4): 735-41. , 2626 Padilha KG, de Sousa RM, Queijo AF, Mendes AM, Reis Miranda D. Nursing Activities Score in the intensive care unit: analysis of the related factors. Intensive Crit Care Nurs. 2008; 24(3): 197-204. ) Regarding the length of stay in the ICU, various studies have shown that workload is directly associated with the ICU stay, i.e., patients who required a higher workload at the beginning of their stay had a longer overall stay in the ICU.( 2626 Padilha KG, de Sousa RM, Queijo AF, Mendes AM, Reis Miranda D. Nursing Activities Score in the intensive care unit: analysis of the related factors. Intensive Crit Care Nurs. 2008; 24(3): 197-204. , 2727 Giakoumidakis K, Baltopoulos GI, Charitos C, Patelarou E, Galanis P, Brokalaki H. Risk factors for prolonged stay in cardiac surgery intensive care units. Nurs Crit Care. 2011; 16(5): 243-51. ) Notably, in our case series, patients with shorter stays (up to two days) required the highest nursing workload. From analyzing this group of patients, we observed that the majority of patients did not survive; therefore, this result was likely influenced by the outcome of the patient.

Regarding the discharge condition of patients from the ICU and hospital, higher workloads were associated with deceased patients, i.e., patients who died required a higher workload than those who survived, which were results consistent with the literature.( 2828 Giakoumidakis K, Baltopoulos GI, Charitos C, Patelarou E, Fotos NV, Brokalaki-Pananoudaki H. Risk factors for increased in-hospital mortality: a cohort study among cardiac surgery patients. Eur J Cardiovasc Nurs. 2012; 11(1): 23-33. ) This result was likely because the dysfunction of multiple organs and systems is a frequent cause of death for ICU patients,( 2929 Lobo SM, Rezende E, Knibel MF, Silva NB, Páramo JA, Nácul FE, et al. Early determinants of death due to multiple organ failure after noncardiac surgery in high-risk patients. Anesth Analg. 2011; 112(4): 877-83. ) and this clinical condition requires establishing several alternative therapies, which thus increases the nursing workload.

The moderate correlation observed between the NAS and the APACHE II disease severity and SOFA organ dysfunction scores reinforced the concept that the nursing workload was not only associated with patient severity, intensity of interventions and procedures performed but also covered a broader array of activities that involved the clinical, administrative, educational and organizational dimensions of an ICU. Higher degrees of correlation have been described by other authors both for patient severity( 3030 Nogueira LS, Santos MR, Mataloun SE, Moock M. Nursing Activities Score: comparação com o índice APACHE II e a mortalidade em pacientes admitidos em unidade de terapia intensiva. Rev Bras Ter Intensiva. 2007; 19(3): 327-30. , 3131 Cudak EK, Dyk D. [Nursing demand in intensive therapy units]. Anestezjol Intens Ter. 2010; 42(2): 70-4. Polish. ) and the presence of organ dysfunction.( 2525 Coelho FU, Queijo AF, Andolhe R, Gonçalves LA, Padilha KG. Carga de trabalho de enfermagem em unidade de terapia intensiva de cardiologia e fatores clínicos associados. Texto Contexto Enferm. 2011; 20(4): 735-41. )

For the moderate correlation between the NAS and TISS-28, the results in the literature are largely conflicting, with one study( 3232 Queijo AF. Tradução para o português e validação de um instrumento de medida de carga de trabalho de enfermagem em Unidade de Terapia Intensiva: Nursing Activities Score (N.A.S.) [dissertação]. São Paulo: Escola de Enfermagem da Universidade de São Paulo; 2002. ) reporting a strong and significant correlation and another study( 6Miranda DR, Nap R, de Rijk A, Schaufeli W, Iapichino G; TISS Working Group. Nursing activities score. Crit Care Med. 2003; 31(2): 374-82. ) reporting a significant yet moderate correlation between the NAS and TISS-28. These results reflect that although these two instruments measure the nursing workload, the TISS-28 measures the nursing work that involves direct patient contact, and the NAS more fully evaluates the nursing activities and functions in an ICU. Because the research institution exclusively applied the TISS 28 score to evaluate the nursing workload, the results of this study suggested that the routine incorporation and collection of NAS data in this field would result in a more accurate assessments of staff size.

Some limitations should be considered. The primary limitation of this study was that the data originated from a single ICU; thus, caution should be used in extrapolating the results to other institutions with similar characteristics. In addition, the study population was a case-mix population; therefore, these results should be interpreted with caution for specific patient groups.

CONCLUSION

This research study conducted in a general intensive care unit had a higher average Nursing Activities Score, which indicated that there was a high nursing workload at this research hospital. The characteristics associated with an increased nursing workload included the type of admission (emergency surgery) and patient outcome (deceased). Patient severity and organ dysfunctions were moderately correlated with nursing workload.

  • Responsible editor: Gilberto Friedman

REFERÊNCIAS

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    Fernandes HS, Pulzi Júnior SA, Costa Filho R. Qualidade em terapia intensiva. Rev Bras Clin Med. 2010; 8(1): 37-45.
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    Lima MK, Tsukamoto R, Fugulin FM. Aplicação do Nursing Activities Score em pacientes de alta dependência de enfermagem. Texto Contexto Enferm. 2008; 17(4): 638-46.
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    Panunto MR, Guirardello EB. Carga de trabalho de enfermagem em Unidade de Terapia Intensiva de um hospital de ensino. Acta Paul Enferm. 2012; 25(1): 96-101.
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    Gonçalves LA, Padilha KG. Fatores associados à carga de trabalho de enfermagem em Unidade de Terapia Intensiva. Rev Esc Enferm USP. 2007; 41(4): 645-52.
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Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    Jul-Sep 2014

History

  • Received
    18 Feb 2014
  • Accepted
    18 July 2014
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