ABSTRACT
Objective:
Measuring the patients' degree of dependency on the nursing staff by utilizing the Patients Classification System (PCS) proposed by Perroca.
Methods:
A descriptive and exploratory study, applying the instrument developed by Perroca for 43 days in the months of August and September 2014 in the clinical and surgical admission center of a university hospital located in the southern region of Brazil.
Results:
Out of 641 assessments, 329 (51.3%) evidenced that patients needed semi-intensive care, followed by 205 (32%) patients needing intermediate care, and 92 (14.4%) requiring intensive care and 15 (2.3%) patients needing minimum care.
Conclusion:
The findings made it possible to identify patients` dependency on nursing care and evidenced a higher concentration of cases in semi-intensive care. A fact that leads us to think about changes to the epidemiologic profiles of patients admitted into the institution.
Keywords:
Nursing Assessment; Classification; Safety Management; Nursing Staff