[Work overload in the perception of nurses working at hospitals]

This article presents the first part of a qualitative research in which we interviewed ten nurses that were burnout with work and ten that were not. The objective was to comprehend how they experience burnout situations. The interviews were analysed according to Content Analysis Technique. The "overload of work" category was the most frequent in the participants' speeches. All the nurses with burnout made reference to this category about tem times, while relating the situations they consider to cause burnout. In the other hand, nurses without burnout only related to it once or twice. The overload of work appears as a consequence of "accumulated functions" on their daily activities and from the consequent "time pressure" they suffer. The speeches reflect the nurse's work organization which, frequently, is difficult to practice in a strict way, leading some professionals to make decisions sometimes considered contradictory.