A nursing intensity system for neonatal nursing

This study is concerned with the development of The Neonatal Nursing Intensity System, a patient classification system for use in staff scheduling in neonatal units. The Neonatal Nursing Intensity System was developed using quantitative method. The first part of the study consisted of the development of data collection tools to be used in activity sampling method and work sampling method data collection of nurses' activities within the neonatal unit. A pilot study was conducted to test the content validity of the tools and to validate the data collection technique of the researcher. The main study was conducted in two neonatal units in New South Wales and examined the activities of fifty nine nurses. Six hundred and thirty two individual attendances of forty three direct care nursing interventions were observed and recorded. Indirect nursing activities were observed and recorded over twelve eight hour shifts. Simple descriptive statistics were applied to the data collected through observation to determine average attendance times for each nursing activity.