Nursing activities score

Abstract

Our study suggests that the Nursing Activities Score measures the consumption of nursing time in the intensive care unit. These results should be validated in independent databases.

Recommendations on basic requirements for intensive care units: structural and organizational aspects

“…The number of intensive care nurses necessary to provide appropriate care and observation is calculated according to the levels of care (LOCs) in the ICU [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. For the description of the LOCs refer to the section ''Activity criteria.''…”

Measuring the nursing workload per shift in the ICU

“…Over the past 30 years, several patient-classification or nursing workload measurement tools (NWMT) have been implemented, with the goal to optimize the utilization of nursing resources and to enhance comparisons between various ICUs [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26].…”

“…The Nursing Activities Score (NAS), partially originating from TISS-28, faces these criticisms [26]. The NAS consists of 23 items, with 5 items being divided into 2 to 3 subitems.…”

“…The NAS is validated for measuring the nursing workload per 24-h period, but the daily score of certain items depends on their performance per shift. It is therefore recommended to record these items during each shift to estimate the total score of these items over 24 h since retrospective scoring may prove to be difficult [26].…”

The continuing imperative to measure workload in ICU: impact on patient safety and staff well-being

“…The patient-based approach uses two methods: the dependency method, for example nurse to patient ratio and patient acuity, which is often undermined by use of a 'fixed' approach such as 1:1 or 1:2 to staff all beds in a unit, or the activity method, which examines time spent on patient activity as a percentage of total time, using measures such as TISS-28 [16] or the nursing activities score (NAS) [17]. Both of these patient/task-based approaches are used for organising tasks, deciding on the staffing establishment and coping with patient severity and patient turnover.…”