The Relationship among Workload, Teamwork, and Missed Nursing Care at Intensive Care Units

Background: Nurses are vital to the delivery of safe and effective care at critical units, but
improper team work and high patient workloads may cause missed nursing care. Research Aims:
To examine the relationship among workload, teamwork, and missed nursing care at intensive care
units Methodology: Correlational research design was conducted at Intensive Care Units (ICU) at
Fayoum university hospitals. Intensive care units at Kom Hamada central hospital, Damanhour
fever hospital and Damanhour chest hospital. The subjects were 207 nurses. A self-administered
questionnaire containing four parts; (Part I: Demographic characteristics of the subjects such as age,
gender, marital status, nurse role, qualifications, experience, shift worked, nurse to patient ratio,
length of shift time, Part II: Miss care Survey was developed to measure the frequency with which
nursing care activities are omitted or delayed, and to identify the factors that contribute to these
missed activities as perceived by nursing staff in the acute care setting,Part III: Workload Subscale
was used to measure the nursing staff’s perception of workload. This subscale was designed to
measure “the extent to which feelings of pressure and urgency dominate the work environment”,
Part IV: Nursing Teamwork Survey, This 33-item instrument was designed to measure teamwork
among nurses in the acute care setting, but the items generically address teamwork activities across
nursing care settings.) Results: The present study showed that less than half of studied nurses had
moderate missed care and moderate team work. According to workload perception, about half of
studied nurses had moderate workload Conclusions: There was highly significant positive
correlation between workload and missed care at p value <0.01. While, there was highly significant
negative correlation between teamwork with workload and missed care at p value <0.01. The study
recommends that: Nurse managers must monitor missed care and workload daily to ensure proper
sizing of staff and safety of care, Educational workshop for nurses about teamwork skills and
coping mechanism related workload, Further researches about predictive factors affecting nursing
missed care.