[Analysis of the situation of intensive care units]

Since 1990, the Sociedad Española de Enfermería Intensiva y Unidades Coronarias has carried out initiatives aiming to collect data which allows us to make an analysis of the status of the ICU nurses and the characteristics of the Units where these professionals develop their activity. This project was performed during 1992 and 1993, with a survey in 132 sanitary centres of the public network in the national territory, in which information about the number of ICUs and their number of beds, number of nurses and assistants in the institution and those ones specifically assigned to ICU, number of admissions, average stay, occupation percentage, admission causes, use of systems of valuation of the seriousness index, staff seniority, shift systems, staff stability, etc; all this data and others referring to 1991. From 53 hospitalary centres that answered the questionnaire, we obtained information of 94 ICUs in which there was an average of 10.4 beds, with 550 admissions per unit (average/year) and an index of occupation of 78%. The average number of nurses who work in each ICU was 22.7, with a nurse/bed ratio in the global calculation of staff of 2.18. In the analysis of shifts, the nurse/bed ratio was one nurse to every 2.08 patients (1:2.08) when there is a maximum of staff during the morning shift. This index is lower in the other shifts. The average of assistants is 12.1 with an assistant/bed ratio of 1.17. When studying the shifts systems, the rotatory shift outstands in 53.19% of ICUs and the existence of rotation systems of staff in other units is 8.5%. With reference to the characteristics of the staff, the average seniority of Nurses was 6.7 years, 76.4% have own their post and the percentage of new intake in 1991 was 22.5%. The lack of incentives to work in ICU is notable, the most problematic aspects being the insufficient economic remuneration, lack of motivation, scarce human resources and insufficient training, among others. Finally, according to the teaching and research activity performed in the units, 5.4% of ICUs have a nurse in the unit with exclusive dedication to teaching, in 20.4% there are nurses who keep a contractual relationship with University Nursing Schools, in 42.6% of the units there are training programs for the new staff and 67% perform some sort of research activity although in most of the cases it is only sporadic.