The authors analyse the problem faced by the Nursing Service of a hospital when budgeting nursing personnel for patient care. They refer that the hospitals, at first, may use prestablished calculation in the literature, but they emphasize that later on, the estimatis must be corrected by their observation of the daily number of hours of care required by the patient in that particular situation and other local factors which interfere with nursing assistance.
Nursing staff, hospital; Nursing administration; Nursing service, hospital