OBJECTIVE: To identify the health records of the diagnosis of fatigue (FD) registered by nurses, to define the characteristics of this FD and, to verify the nursing interventions, in the health records of patients with cancer, admitted into hospitals. METHODS: Is a retrospective crosssectional study. The data collection was performed in 107 health records of patients with medical diagnosis of cancer, from August to December 2007. RESULTS: It was found that the diagnosis of fatigue represented 0.9%, despite that in the daily developments recorded by the nurses, it was found the defining characteristics of fatigue in 15.9% of the patients. CONCLUSION: Despite identifying the defining characteristics (signs and symptoms), the nurses did not establish the fatigue diagnosis. For this reason, doubts appeared about the adequacy of the defining characteristics of this diagnosis. Further studies, on this subject, should be made to improve the nursing care of cancer patients.
Nursing diagnosis; Fatigue; Neoplasms; Signs and symptoms