Professional profile and work conditions of nurses working in intensive care units: A multicentre study

Aim To determine the professional profile and the work conditions of nurses working in intensive care units (ICU) in Colombia, Argentina, Peru and Brazil. Background ICUs require a differentiated professional profile to provide quality care, and appropriate working conditions, leading to a transformation of care and management practices. Design Descriptive multicentre cross-sectional observational study. Methods An online survey was applied to identify both the characteristics of the professional profile and the working conditions. 1,427 ICU nursing professionals were included. RStudio statistical software was used for the analysis of the information. Descriptive statistics were used for the presentation of the results. The STROBE checklist for cross-sectional studies was used in this study. Results Only 33.6% of the professionals had a specialisation degree in intensive care. The skills that were most frequently put into practice were communication (68.5%) and care management (78.5%). The most predominant nurse-to-patient ratios were 1:2, and greater than 1:6. 59.1% of the nurses had an indefinite term contract, 38.8% worked 48 hours per week and 49.8% had rotating shifts. Only 50.4% of them received incentives. The average salary ranged between 348 and 1,500 USD. 64.5% of the participants were satisfied with their job. Conclusion It is necessary to strengthen nurses' professional profile by promoting both postgraduate education and the development of troubleshooting and teamwork skills. It is necessary to standardise the nurse-to-patient ratio, improve wages and increase incentives to achieve greater job satisfaction. Relevance to practice The knowledge and the improvement of both the professional profile and the work conditions of nurses working in intensive care units will improve the quality of the care given to critical patients and, therefore, the quality of health outcomes.

Automated summary

The study found that only 33.6% of professionals had a specialization degree in intensive care, with nurses' working conditions and salaries generally unsatisfactory, and job satisfaction reached 64.5%.