[Nursing performance in materials management in intensive care units]

Professional competences of nurse to work in Intensive Care Units: an integrative review

This study aimed to identify and analyze nurses' competences to work at Intensive Care Units-ICU. An integrative review method was used, and data were collected in LILACS, SciELO and BDENF, from August to October 2010. Ten articles were identified, published in the last 12 years. Data grouping permitted the construction of thematic units related to nurses' competences: nursing care management, high-complexity nursing care delivery, decision making, leadership, communication, continuing/permanent education, human resource management, material resource management. The professional competences identified can support the outline of guidelines to constitute the profile of nursing working in intensive care units and drive/mobilize the improvement of nursing care practices.

[The use of work process category for Brazilian nurses: a bibliographic analysis]

The aim of this study was to identify, in bibliographic production, how Brazilian nurses have been discussed "work process" in nursing practice. The bibliographic research was realized in Lilacs, in a period from January of 1993 to December of 2003, and focus the periodics: Acta Paulista de Enfermagem, Nursing (SP), Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem, Revista da Escola de Enfermagem da USP, Revista latinoamericana de Enfermagem e Revista Texto e contexto de Enfermagem. The key words used were: process and work and care; process and work and nursing. The results show that is small the bibliographic production that using "work process" like a category of analysis of nursing practice, and there are a concentration of this production in articles that focus tools of nursing work In this study were find 40 articles and the most of them was published in Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem in the year of 2000.

[Management of technology in intensive care]

The lives of hospitalized patients depend on diagnostic-therapeutic procedures and on the care provided by the health team. It also depends on the quality and availability of factors such as: physical structure and material and human and financial resources. The need to optimize these resources and re-establish patients' health has brought about the Intensive Care Units (ICU), whose design must consider the physical environment and clinical equipment which are indispensable in health care. Aiming at identifying the level of knowledge of health professionals as to technical and operational information in equipment manuals and the perception of the interviewed professionals in relation to the adequacy of the physical and electrical installations of such units, we conducted a descriptive study in an ICU of a public hospital in Salvador, Brazil. The results show that such installations were considered to be unsuitable for the safe development of activities and that most of the health team members did not know the technical or operational specifications in the equipment manuals.