Abstract
Objective: To describe the use of the Nursing Activities Score (NAS) as a tool to assess the nursing workload in intensive care units. Methods: This is an integrative review carried out with publications from 2010 to 2018 in the databases of the Virtual Health Library (VHL). The descriptors used for the research were "Intensive Care Unit", "Work Rate" and "Nursing". Results: 18 studies were found that described the use of NAS. Most used the descriptive-exploratory method, with a level of evidence in stratum 2 of Oxford, published in 2014 and coming from southeastern Brazil. NAS is still little used in Brazilian ICUs and, through new research, it is expected that its implementation will increase in public and private institutions, investing in staff growth and with the benefit of new technologies. Final considerations: We highlight that the NAS is still little used in Brazilian ICUs, however it is an important instrument to measure the nursing workload in the ICU, as it includes several activities performed and demonstrated, in general, that the time spent nursing is high, indicating overload of the team, which can be associated with the occurrence of adverse events and less effective assistance.