Background: The complexity of care can be described through a clinical nursing information system, in particular through the Professional Assessment Instrument -PAI-, encoding each health care activity in time units and analysing the relationship of observed time to patient characteristics in relation to the functional models of care needs.
Designs: Observational study.
Methods: Data were collected for 11 months in 2016-17 in four inpatient units of an Italian hospital using the Professional Assessment Instrument, and a survey grid to measure the time of the nursing activities delivered. All activities with a frequency of 20 or more have been included. The Work Sampling technique was used for time-tracking.
Results: The sample included 2765 nursing activities. The mean times for each care activity were compared showing significant differences. A statistically significant correlation (Sperman's correlation coefficient) was observed both between the observed time and the level of illness severity and between time and functional models.
Conclusions: Patient complexity, both in terms of illness severity and level of dependence, can be coded through a clinical nursing information system. This facilitates the classification and measurement of nursing care delivered, which includes the entire care process.
Keywords: Clinical nursing information system; Nursing complexity; Nursing diagnosis; Work sampling.