Association of nursing workload and unplanned extubations in a pediatric intensive care unit.

OBJECTIVE

To estimate nursing workload from the patient acuity level (PAL) assigned to patients in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and to determine its influence on unplanned extubations.

DESIGN

Prospective cohort study.

SETTING

The 19-bed PICU of an urban, university-affiliated, tertiary children's hospital.

PATIENTS

All patients admitted to the PICU.

INTERVENTIONS

None.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS

The study encompassed 2,193 nursing shifts and 1,919 admissions to the PICU over 24 months. The shift census averaged 12.0 patients (range 5-18) and was staffed by 9.4 nurses (range 4-16) for an average patient/nurse ratio of 1.3 +/- 0.2. Patients were assigned a PAL of 1-7 based on a classification system derived from time studies of 12 general nursing tasks. The total PALs per shift divided by the number of nursing staff yielded an average assignment of 5.8 +/- 0.7 PALs. Forty unplanned extubations (0.76 unplanned extubations/100 ventilator days) were observed during the study period. Logistic regression revealed positive associations between unplanned extubations and patient/nurse ratio (p = .03) and the shift PAL/nurse ratio (p = .01). The likelihood of an unplanned extubation when nurses covered >6.3 PALs was 3.8 times higher than during those shifts when they covered <5.3 PALs.

CONCLUSIONS

The likelihood of an unplanned extubation increased with higher patient/nurse and patient acuity/nurse ratios. Successful interventions to reduce the frequency of this medical error may need to address both nurse demand methodology and workload.