Measuring nursing care workload in non-intensive cardiac surgery: an observational study

An understanding of the time nurses spend assessing and meeting patients' needs is key to improve nursing outcomes and support organizational well-being.

The study was designed to determine whether the use of an assessment scale with some clinical parameters indicative of hemodynamic, neurological, respiratory and mobility functions could be able to estimate nursing care workload in non-intensive cardiac surgery patients.

A correlational descriptive study was designed. Two types of inpatients were included in the study: those waiting for cardiac surgery and those who had already undergone cardiac surgery. Using specific indicators, patient's clinical status was classified in 10 levels of complexity and nursing care interventions were divided into three categories: clinical activities, educational activities and organizational activities. For each of this categories the correlation coefficient between the nursing time and the level of patient's complexity was measured.

Per hour of hospitalization, nurses spent an average of 11 minutes and 49 seconds providing care to each patient. A good correlation coefficient between the amount of the nursing time spent for clinical activities and the level of patient's complexity was found. Educational activities were minimal compared with the clinical and organizational activities, but they were mostly conducted during the preoperative phase.

The assessment scale tested in this study, including some information about the patient's clinical status, allowed to estimate clinical nursing workload in non-intensive cardiac surgery patients.