The main goal of this work was to identify factors related to nurses' understanding about the manual recording system, through a descriptive-exploratory approach, developed with two hundred nursing professionals working at different hospital institutions located in the city of João Pessoa/Paraíba, Brazil. Data were collected with special forms using the Likert's behavioral scale. Results identified five factors such as: a) lack of knowledge about information systems; b) dissatisfaction with the manual recording system; c) needs of an informatized recording system to be used in nursing care; d) desire to utilize a classification system with all steps of the nursing process; and e) difficulties with nursing diagnosis related to manual recording. Findings demonstrated the dissatisfaction of nursing professionals about the manual recording system, requiring deep changes in the established recording model.
information systems; computerized medical recording systems; nursing records
