ABSTRACT
Objective
To analyze the interrater reliability of NAS among critical care nurses and managers in an ICU.
Method
This was a methodological study performed in an adult, general ICU in Norway. In a random selection of patients, the NAS was scored on 101 patients by three raters: a critical care nurse, an ICU physician and a nurse manager. Interrater reliability was analyzed by agreement between groups and kappa statistics.
Results
The mean NAS were 88.4 (SD=16.2) and 88.7 (SD=24.5) respectively for the critical care nurses and nurse managers. A lower mean of 83.7 (SD=21.1) was found for physicians. The 18 medical interventions showed higher agreement between critical care nurses and physicians (85.6%), than between critical care nurses and nurse managers (78.7). In the five nursing activities the Kappa-coefficients were low for all activities in all compared groups.
Conclusion
The study indicated a satisfactory agreement of nursing workload between critical care nurses and managers.
Workload; Nursing, Team; Nursing Care; Intensive Care Units; Reproducibility of Results