Iatrogenic occurrences with medication in ICU are adverse events that demand nurse's interventions. The aims of this studywere: - to identify nurse's procedures and feelings in this situation; - to characterize factors related to this kind of event inICU settings. A questionnaire was answered by 148 ICU nurses (76,7%) from 7 hospitals in São Paulo city, in 1997 and1998. The results showed that of 407 mentioned procedures, 31,7% included to comunicate the event to the doctor, followedby to intensify the patient control (26,5%). Regarding the 260 feelings informed by the nurses, anxiety and impotence werethe most frequent, respectively, 38,1% and 14,6%. Of 303 factors related to the occurrences nurses pointed out neglet (24,6%)and professional innexperience (15,1%) as the most important. Forty three point two per cent (43,2%) of the nurses hardlyexperimented this situation in their professional life in ICU.
Iatrogenic disease; Medication errors; Nursing; Intensive care units
