[Measuring the nursing workload in a medical-surgical high dependency unit through nursing activities score (NAS). A prospective observational study]

Measuring the nursing workload in a medical-surgical high dependency unit through nursing activities score (NAS). a prospective observational study.Measuring the nursing staff workload allows adequate delivery of resources within the intensive care unit and high dependency unit to ensure an adequate nurse to patient ratio.Exploring the nursing workload in the medical-surgical high dependency unit (HDU) at Careggi University Hospital (Florence, Italy).Monocentric prospective observational study. We enrolled patients admitted in HDU from 11 February to 13 March 2021. Nursing Activity Score (NAS) was measured every 24 hours.Patients included in the study were 75. Three groups based on their admission diagnosis were identified (medical, surgical, trauma). The median NAS score was 59.7 (IQR: 53.7-68.2; range 34.7-119.7). Statistically significant differences were found between the median NAS values for the three admission diagnoses: 67.4 (IQR: 54.4-73.4) for medical patients, 60.2 (IQR: 54.4-63.3) for trauma patients and 59.1 (IQR: 55.1-64.7) for surgical patients. These results showed that the items of NAS that mostly affect workload are "monitoring", "mobilization", "patient hygiene", and "admission and discharge procedures".This study confirms that the NAS scoree can be used in HDUs as well as in intensive care units. The ideal nurse-to-patient ratio was equal to 0.6.