Analysis of records by nursing technicians and nurses in medical records

OBJECTIVES: to analyze the main non-conformities of the nursing records of a public hospital in Natal, Brazil. METHODS: this is a descriptive, cross-sectional study, with a quantitative approach. This study was conducted in nursing departments of medical and surgical wards. The sample was composed of 120 medical records of inpatients between October and December 2016. The obtained data were tabulated and analyzed by simple statistics in absolute and relative frequency using the 2013 Microsoft Excel software. The Pareto Diagram was used to evaluate the non-conformities of the records. RESULTS: the main problems in the nursing records were the absence of the professional category and the nursing council number, responsible for 41.8% of the non-conformities in the records of nursing technicians; for nurses' records, the main non-conformities were the absence of time and the illegible handwriting, with 61.2%. CONCLUSIONS: the study showed that nursing professionals perform their records incompletely and often do not document the care provided.