Nursing Professional’s Working Load Given To The Elderly At The Intensive Unit Care

Abstract

The natural aging process accelerate the appearance and the installation of diseases and symptoms characteristic of the age in which the physical and cognitive aspects are compromised progressively. Increasing the necessity of specialized cares and intensive accompaniment. This study aimed to evaluate through the Nursing Activities Score appliance, the nursing team’s working load, destined to elderly people assisted at intensive unit care and subsidize the personal sizing according to what advocate the legislation. It is about a descriptive and documental study of quantitative approach. It was used as data basis 50 patient records of elderly users admitted at a public intensive unit care from João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil. It was determined that 56% (28) of the elderly in his first hospitalization day at the Intensive Unit Care, required a nursing high working load while 44% (42) a nursing low working load. Through the sum of the Nursing Activities Score average score, we can achieve the total of hours at the nursing assistance necessaries to the elderly patient care during the hospitalization. The average scores obtained by the total score, corresponded to 59.2 ± 7.8, transforming in hours according to the conducted calculus, correspond to 14.47 hours of nursing assistance turned to the elderly people. It is waited that the results can contribute to quantify the expended assistance time and also evidence the real necessity of the people to ensure safe and quality assistance practices to the elderly people.  Descriptors: Workload. Nursing. Aged. Intensive Care Units.