[Is the NEMS scale useful to describe homogeneously a population of patients in Intensive Care?]

The use of scales that quantify therapeutic effort and severity level is a common practice in Intensive Care Units (ICU). The NEMS and APACHE II scales allow us to objectively determine the therapeutic effort and severity level of the patients admitted to the unit. With the use of both scales, we aimed to control our work quality, comparing the results obtained with various measurements. In this way, we will discover what type of patients require a greater workload, and we will also be able to distribute them according to care levels. We designed a prospective study of 458 patients hospitalized in a 6-bed ICU of a community hospital. The obtained results demonstrate that there is a correlation in our unit between the NEMS and APACHE II scales. Due to the characteristics of our hospital, most of the patients we admit are classified into care level 2 (NEMS 18-30). Surgical patients have a greater NEMS than medical patients (p = 0.02). If we divide our patients according to diseases, it stands out that the highest score corresponds to cardiovascular surgery postoperative patients in a sub-acute period (NEMS 39.13 +/- 13) and the lowest one to traumatologic surgery postoperative patients (NEMS 20.66 +/- 3.72). It is concluded that the NEMS scale is easily applied and can reflect the effort of nursing care staff. With the data obtained through the application of the NEMS and APACHE II scales, we could objectively define our work and classify the patients we treated according to care levels.