Yann-Fen C. Chao
Mackay Medical College, Taiwan
Title: Validation of Nursing Activity Score and Nursing Equivalent Manpower use Scale in Taiwan Intensive care units and exploring the appropriateness of nursing activities in ICU
Biography
Biography: Yann-Fen C. Chao
Abstract
A validation study was conducted in 2016 to evaluate the applicability of NAS and NEMS scales ICUs in Taiwan. The NEMS scale constitutes a simplified version of the TISS-28 and consists of 9 items rather than 28. As reported in the literature, the average TISS-28/NEMS score of a ICU patient was 23~28; a TISS-28/NEMS unit was equivalent to 10minnutes and a nurse can take 46 TISS-28/NEMS units in a shift. The nursing activities score (NAS) was developed in 2003. The score obtained when completing the NAS results was a percentage of nursing time spent on direct patient care in a 24 h period; thus was used to calculate the nursing manpower needed. NAS score explains 81% of nursing time in the ICU, whilst the TISS-28 only corresponds to 43% of that time. NAS was widely used by European countries in nursing allocation for years and with research reports published. The pilot study of this project included 375 subjects. The primary result revealed that NEMS scores of Taiwanese ICU patients were similar to the Europeans. However, Taiwanese ICU patients had higher NAS scores. The estimated times for NAS items by Taiwanese ICU experts were different from the coded time. It was indicated that the time consumed for NEMS and NAS items may need revision for different countries and ICUs.