[Nursing activities score: differences in nursing workload in three intensive care units]

The activities that impact on the nursing workload in an intensive care unit have not been described.

To retrospectively analyze the nursing workload in the three intensive care units-ICU (general, neurosurgery and cardiac surgery) of the same department with the Nursing Activities Score (NAS) to describe the nursing interventions that mostly impact on the workload.

Retrospective observational study. Patients admitted from January 2006 to December 2012 were included in the study. The NAS was completed every 24 hours around 6 am.

Patients included in the study were 7588; their mean NAS score was 61.7 ± 19.02%; 75.9 ± 1.44 in General ICU, 61.6 ± 2.46 Neuro ICU, 62.5 ± 3.06 in the Cardiosurgical ICU. The items that mostly impacted on the nursing workload were the need of monitoring and titration, the hygiene procedures, and the Mobilization and positioning. The three procedures were performed with different frequencies in the three ICUs.

The results confirm that the minimum required care in ICUs is around 950 minutes/day. The differences observed in the three ICUs were determined by the different clinical severity and caring complexity of the patients.