---

Background and aim: The subjective workload is a significant stressor in nursing profession and the stress can lead to cognitive problems and occupational cognitive failure. However, the relationship between subjective workload and cognitive failure is ambigious. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the relationship between nurses’ Subjective workload and occupational cognitive failure in intensive care units.
Methods: This analytical cross-sectional research was conducted on 176 nurses working in intensive care units of Rasht medical centers in 2017. Samples were selected using census method. The data collection tools consisted of personal and occupational data, standard questionnaires for subjective workload (NASA-TLX) and occupational cognitive failure (OCFQ). The data analysis was performed by the software of SPSS 21 and descriptive and inferential statistic tests of Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis, Spearman correlation.
Results: The majority of samples were female (93.2%) with a mean age of 35.85 ± 7.8, married (71%) and undergraduate (92.2%), ICU (71%), Formal employment (64.2%) with an average work record of 12.21 ± 7. 06 years (86.9%). Mean score and standard deviation for subjective workload was 59.95 ± 16.41 and for occupational cognitive failure 70.31 ± 17.06. There was a significant positive correlation between occupational cognitive failure and subjective workload (r = 0.272, p <0.001).
Conclusion: Considering the relationship between subjective workload and cognitive failure, the patient's safety and eventually the quality of care may be improved by designing strategies to reduce the subjective workload and considering its related factors in the planning of human resources employed in intensive care units.
 
Keywords: Intensive care units, Nursing staff, Workload

---

Background & Aim: Mental workload of nurses increases their fatigue, and result in adverse consequences for patients. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between nurses' mental workload and the quality of care services in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
Methods: This descriptive-correlation study was conducted in 2019 in Zanjan. In this study, NASA-TLX tool with a score of zero to 100 was used to assess the mental workload of nurses. For this purpose, the mental workload of 38 ICU nurses was assessed 138 times. In addition, the quality of care was observed in 300 patients using a researcher-made checklist.   
Results: the mean mental workload of nurses was 81.53±0.987. The average score of care quality out of 100 scores was 70.28±11.06. Among the mean scores of care dimensions, the emergency measures was lower than other dimensions along with poor performance level. In other cases, patient care scores were above 50, indicating good or excellent quality of care. There was no statistically significant relationship between nurses' mental workload and their quality of care.
Conclusion: According to the results of this study, mental workload of ICU nurses was high. The quality of nursing care seems to be poorly related to the nurses’ mental workload. Therefore, it is recommended to investigate the reasons for decrease in quality of care with qualitative studies.