Working risk in the neonatal intensive care unit: the perceptionof the nurse

Resumen

It is a quantitative, exploratory as well as descriptive study which aims to know the nurses’ perception concerning the influence of the performance of the nursing assistance in the occupational environment. It had as environment a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), of a school maternity hospital in Fortaleza-CE. Data were collected from August to September, 2004 through a semi-structured questionnaire, applied to 24 active nurses. We verified that the biggest concentration of nurses (37,5%) has from one to five years of experience and that 19 (79%) work in other places, being submitted to high number of working hours. Overload, stress and noise are discomforts found in the place, causing the excess of activities and fatigue. We concluded that the stress in the unit is the main damage caused by such working practice, whose frequent occurrence lead to a reflection about the consequences to the professional/care taker’s health and the necessity of improvement of his/her working conditions.