Introduction:

Functional capacity refers to the person's autonomy to carry out tasks that are part of their day-to-day life and ensure the possibility of living alone. Carrying out this study leads to reflection on the effectiveness of providing rehabilitation nursing care in terms of promoting gains in the user's functional independence in the home context.

Objectives:

The research aimed to describe and explain the existence of associations between the variables: degree of functional dependence; rehabilitation nursing care provided and some sociodemographic factors in order to understand how the care provided by the rehabilitation nurse contributes to the reduction of the user's degree of dependence.

Methodology:

We carried out a descriptive, retrospective study, with the purpose of evaluating the functional evolution of the patient from the moment of admission to the time of discharge from the Integrated Continuing Care Team. We used the Barthel index to monitor functionality. We constituted a sample of 63 users.

Results:

At time of admissions there were no independent users or patients with mild dependence. The total dependence represented 20.6%, the severely dependence 44.4% and the moderate dependence 34.9%. After the services of rehabilitation nursing care, at the time of discharge, the value of total dependents was 12.7%, severely and moderate dependence decreased to 19.0% each. Also, there was a light dependence with 15.9% and 33.3% of users were already independent.

Conclusion:

There was a statistically significant evolution in all activities of daily living, except for those of elimination, so it was concluded that rehabilitation nursing care, in a home context, translates into gains in functionality for the studied users.

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