Objective:to identify the relationship between the workload of the nursing team and the occurrence of patient safety incidents linked to nursing care in a public hospital in Chile. Method:quantitative, analytical, cross-sectional research through review of medical records. The estimation of workload in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) was performed using the Therapeutic Interventions Scoring System (TISS-28) and for the other services, we used the nurse/patient and nursing assistant/patient ratios. Descriptive univariate and multivariate analysis were performed. For the multivariate analysis we used principal component analysis and Pearson correlation. Results:879 post-discharge clinical records and the workload of 85 nurses and 157 nursing assistants were analyzed. The overall incident rate was 71.1%. It was found a high positive correlation between variables workload (r = 0.9611 to r = 0.9919) and rate of falls (r = 0.8770). The medication error rates, mechanical containment incidents and self-removal of invasive devices were not correlated with the workload. Conclusions:the workload was high in all units except the intermediate care unit. Only the rate of falls was associated with the workload.

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This report was aimed at characterizing medication errors and evaluating their consequences for the patients' conditions and for the nursing workload in the Intensive Care Units (ICU) and Semi-Intensive Care Units (SICU) of two hospitals in the city of São Paulo. The sample was 50 patients, and data was gathered in record logs. The severity of the conditions and the nursing workload were assessed before and after the occurrence. Out of a total of 52 medication errors, 12 (23.80%), were non-administration of dosage, 11 (21.15%) were wrong medication, and 9 (17.31%) excessive dosage. There were no changes in patient conditions (p=0.316), but the nursing workload increased (p=0.009). As for the medication group, i.e, potentially dangerous or non-dangerous, there were no statistically significant differences either in the severity of the patients (p=0.456) or in the nursing workload (p=0.264) after the occurrence.

Toffoletto MC. Factors associated with the adverse events in Intensive Care Unit. [thesis] Sao Paulo (SP): Nursing School of the University of São Paulo; 2008. The safety of serious patients is a goal of the quality of service in Intensive Care Units (ICUs), therefore, the need to investigate the factors related to the occurrence of adverse events in this context. This study reports a quantitative, retrospective, analytic-transversal research that aimed to analyze the factors associated with the incidents and/or adverse events (INC/AE) in the preparation and administration of medication, in the care of endotracheal/tracheostomy tubes, probes, drains, catheters and fall in ICUs according to the demographic and clinical characteristics of patients and structural resources of the Units. Data was collected from the registry of INC/AE made in the charts of patients that were notified with some type of INC/AE in five ICUs of five hospitals of the City of Sao Paulo from 2003 to 2006. The statistical treatment consisted of an analysis of multivariate logistic regression to identify the independent factors of INC/AE and exit conditions of the Units. The author also ran the multiple linear regression analysis to identify the independent factors of the length of stay in the ICUs. Variables that presented a Wald test rate <0,20 in the univariate logistic regression entered in the models. All analysis adopted a 5% significance level. From 21.230 total admissions in the ICUs, 377 (1,78%) patients suffered some type of INC/AE. A total of 461 occurrences were notified. Most of these occurrences were related to the preparation and administration of medication (196-42,51%), followed by the peripheral catheters and A-lines (105-22,77%), and the nasograstic tubes (73-15,83%). The low number of occurrences (16-2,82%) of factors associated with INC/AE, material/equipment resources and physical settings of the units made the analysis of these variables unfeasible. The same way, no hospital made available daily nursing schedules that contained retrospective data about the existing human resources at the time of the study. The author verified that the number of days of use of therapeutic artifacts was one of the main independent factors associated with INC/AE. These related to the preparation and administration of medication (number of days of TE/Traq.), as well as to the care of peripheral catheters, nasograstic tubes and central catheters (number of days of therapeutic artifacts), followed by seriousness and non-survival of the patients. The factors associated with the length of stay in the ICU were number of days with probes, drains and catheters, number of items of the prescribed medication, non-survival and INC/AE with peripheral catheters and medication. At last, the author established that non-survival patients spent a greater number of days with TE/Traq. They were also more serious and were about five times more likely to suffer INC/AE with TE/Traq. Considering that the focus of a patient safety is shared responsibility of all pr...