Objective:

To identify the nursing workload required by adult patients during hospitalization in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and in relation to the clinical outcome.

Methods:

Prospective cohort with 53 patients admitted to an adult ICU between July and September 2018. The Nursing Activities Score (NAS) was used for data collection. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to compare means. The value of p < 0.05 was considered significant. This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee (Opinion 2,014,344).

Results:

There was a predominance of female patients (28 - 52.83%), aged between 17 and 96 years, from the urgency/emergency service (34 - 65.38%), and admitted due to diseases of the circulatory system (18 - 33.96%). The severity of patients according to the SAPS 3 score was 52.32 points and the estimated mortality was of 25.34%. The length of hospital stay ranged from 2 to 38 days and discharge prevailed among the outcomes (39 - 73.58%). The average NAS was 57.41%, equivalent to 13.78 hours of nursing care in a 24-hour period. The average nursing workload at admission was higher than the average measured at the time of clinical outcome (p < 0.001). Patients who died during hospitalization had an average NAS higher than that of patients who survived (p = 0.022).

Conclusions:

The nursing workload varied over the hospitalization period, being greater on the first day of hospitalization and in the care of patients with a poor prognosis (death).

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