Workloads in nursing activities performed in university hospitals

ABSTRACT Objective: Analyze the exposure of nursing workers to workloads present in university hospitals located in southern Brazil. Method: Cross-sectional quantitative study performed with 361 nursing workers from two University Hospitals between November 2019 and February 2020. An instrument addressing sociodemographic and occupational variables was used together with the previously validated Workloads in Nursing Activities Scale. The distribution of frequencies, measures of location, and variability were identified, and analysis of variance and the Tukey test were performed. Results: The construct that obtained the highest mean was F3 – Biological Loads (3.00), revealing that nursing workers are very intensively exposed to biological loads. Workloads were significantly different between the work units – physiological (p = 0.001), biological (p = 0.007), psychological (p = 0.042), mechanical (p = 0.014), chemical (p = 0.001), and physical (p = 0.001). Conclusion: The workers identified that exposure to workloads varies in intensity, showing aspects of the work performed in health institutions that either aggravate or mitigate workloads through the activities performed by nursing workers.