Abstract
Nursing workload according to Vårdtyngd Lund (VTL) has been registered at the unite since 1992. An earlier study showed that nurses interpreted the indicators of the instrument and the general outlines for using it differently. The aims of this study were to investigate the ability of VTL to discriminate among different patients, the internal consistency of the indicators of the instrument and the inter-rater reliability. Thirty-one nurses independently rated the workload of six patients earlier cared for at the unite. The results indicate that the instrument may have a low discriminative power. Cronbach's alpha was 0.7. A high percentage of agreement (> 90 %) was found in 26 % of the measurements. In 10 % the agreement was very low (< 50%).
The correlation measured as weighted kappa varied between 0.18 – 0.64. The results indicate that the indicators and the manual need to be developed further and more clearly defined so that the nurses can use them in a congruent way.