Among Nursing and Psychology professionals, the job satisfaction of those in Adult Inpatient Units is analyzed, with a new scale to measure nursing workloads validated. Objective: The objective of this study was to relate nursing workloads to professional job satisfaction. Methods: This is an observational, analytical, descriptive, concurrent and quantitative study, which used the Overall Job Satisfaction scale and subscales therein, to identify global satisfaction—intrinsic or related to motivational factors and extrinsic or associated with hygienic factors—in nursing professionals (n = 104) from eight Inpatient Units of Internal Medicine and Surgery, in four hospital centers, to describe job satisfaction in the professionals studied and to find statistically significant associations between job satisfaction and workload (measured with the scale MIDENF^®) in the inpatient units where they work. Results: There were higher levels of satisfaction in the variables “relationship with immediate boss” and “relationship with fellow workers”, and lower levels in “relationship with senior management” and “organizational system of the unit”. In the inferential analysis, the scores were 75.63 for overall satisfaction, 35.28 for intrinsic satisfaction, and 40.36 for extrinsic satisfaction. Conclusions: There is a close relationship between workload and job satisfaction, showing more dissatisfaction regarding organizational aspects and professional recognition.

We conducted validation of a scale to measure nursing workloads, previously designed using NIC interventions within the four nursing functions (patient care, teaching, management, and research). Methods: This is an analytical, descriptive, prospective, and observational study using qualitative methodology (focus groups and in-depth interviews) with a quantitative and qualitative section (committee of experts and real application of the scale through a validation pilot and with multicentric application, including hospitalization units of internal medicine and surgery of four hospitals). Qualitative analysis was performed with Atlas.ti8 and quantitative analysis with R. Results: Qualitatively, all the participants agreed on the need to measure workloads in all nursing functions with standardized terminology. The expert committee found greater relevance (91.67%) in “prevention” and “health education” as well as consistency with the construct and adequate wording in 99% of the selected items. In the pilot test and multicenter application, the nurses spent more time on the caring dimension, in the morning shift, and on the items “self-care”, “medication”, “health education”, “care of invasive procedures”, “wounds care”, “comfort”, and “fluid therapy”. Cronbach’s alpha 0.727, composite reliability 0.685, AVE 0.099, and omega coefficient 0.704 were all acceptable. Construct validity: KMO 0.5 and Bartlett’s test were significant. Conclusions: The scale can be considered valid to measure nursing workloads, both qualitatively in obtaining the consensus of experts and health personnel and quantitatively, with acceptable reliability and validity superior to other similar scales.