• Lilia de Souza Nogueira, Cristiane de Alencar Domingues, Renato Sérgio Poggetti, and Regina Marcia Cardoso de Sousa.
• Medical-Surgical Nursing Department, School of Nursing, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
• Plos One. 2014 Jan 1; 9 (11): e112125.

BackgroundFrom the perspective of nurses, trauma patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) demand a high degree of nursing workload due to hemodynamic instability and the severity of trauma injuries. This study aims to identify the factors related to the high nursing workload required for trauma victims admitted to the ICU.MethodsThis is a prospective, cross-sectional study using descriptive and correlation analyses, conducted with 200 trauma patients admitted to an ICU in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The nursing workload was measured using the Nursing Activities Score (NAS). The distribution of the NAS values into tertiles led to the identification of two research groups: medium/low workload and high workload. The Chi-square, Fisher's exact, Mann-Whitney and multiple logistic regression tests were utilized for the analyses.FindingsThe majority of patients were male (82.0%) and suffered blunt trauma (94.5%), with traffic accidents (57.5%) and falls (31.0%) being prevalent. The mean age was 40.7 years (± 18.6) and the mean NAS was 71.3% (± 16.9). Patient gender, the presence of pulmonary failure, the number of injured body regions and the risk of death according to the Simplified Acute Physiology Score II were factors associated with a high degree of nursing workload in the first 24 hours following admission to the ICU.ConclusionWorkload demand was higher in male patients with physiological instability and multiple severe trauma injuries who developed pulmonary failure.

16 keywords...

hide…