Nurses’ Experiences of Nonpatient Factors That Affect Nursing Workload: A Study of the PAONCIL Instrument’s Nonpatient Factors

Abstract

In the RAFAELA patient classification system, the professional assessment of optimal nursing care intensity level (PAONCIL) instrument is used to assess the optimal nursing intensity level per unit. The PAONCIL instrument contains an overall assessment of the actual nursing intensity level and an additional list of central nonpatient factors that may increase or decrease the total nursing workload (NWL). The aim of this cross-sectional study was to assess and determine which nonpatient factors affect nurses’ experiences of their total NWL in both outpatient settings and hospitals, as captured through the PAONCIL instrument. The data material consisted of PAONCIL questionnaires from 38 units and 37 outpatient clinics at 11 strategically selected hospitals in Finland, and included nurses’ answers (n=1307) to the question of which factors, other than nursing intensity, affect total NWL. The methods for data analyses were qualitative content analyses. The nonpatient factors that affected nurses’ experiences of total NWL are “organization of work,” “working conditions,” “self-control,” and “cooperation.” The actual list of nonpatient factors in the PAONCIL instrument is to a reasonable extent relevant, but the list should be improved to include nurses’ actual working conditions and self-control.