The work environment in public and private intensive care units

Abstract

Objective: To analyze the work environment in intensive care units from public and private hospitals. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted with 66 nurses in four intensive care units. Two questionnaires were used for data collection, one for the socioeconomic profile and the other composed by the subscales of the validated Brazilian version of the Nursing Work Index-Revised (B-NWI-R). Results: The nurses reported a favorable work environment for the exercise of professional nursing practices in the intensive care units (overall mean = 1.95 and SD = 0.40). By comparing private and public hospitals it was observed that the overall score of the B-NWI-R reached values of 1.91 (SD = 0.39) and 1.99 (SD = 0.42), respectively, with a p-value of 0.459. Conclusion: The four intensive care units analyzed in this study presented favorable work environments for nursing practices. The fact of belonging to private or public hospitals was not significant in the analysis.