Introduction:

Scientific and technological advances in healthcare have given rise to the need for inter-hospital transfers of critically ill patients due to the lack of support from specific specialties and technologies at some healthcare units. These transfers require dedicated nursing teams to ensure the continued quality and excellence of care provision.

Objective:

To map the available evidence on nursing workload in the inter-hospital transport of critically ill patients.

Methods:

Scoping review conducted according to the PRISMA-ScR methodology and the framework proposed by the JBI: population (critical care nurses), concept (workload), and context (inter-hospital transfers). A literature search was performed on MEDLINE, CINAHL Complete, Scielo, Cochrane, LILACS, and MedicLatina; and the grey literature was searched on the RCAAP, DART-Europe, and OpenGrey databases. Studies published in Portuguese, Spanish, and English were included in the review, with no limitation on the time of publication.

Results:

Two articles were included in the review. Three key themes were identified: time management, human resources management, and transfer time.

Conclusion:

Key findings were: the importance of the intense workload, the need for time management in the inter-hospital transport of critically ill patients, the resulting reduction in nurse staffing ratio, and the influence of transfer time. Nurses play a key role in every stage of the inter-hospital transport of critically ill patients.

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