TISS
Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System
- First introduced in 1974 by David J. Cullen MD
- TISS is a method of quantifying nursing and medical care required by critically ill patients according to the number and type of therapeutic interventions employed.
- By quantifying nursing care, this helps reflect the amount of time as well as complexity of the care being given to a patient.
- TISS has become a widely accepted and validated method of classifying critically ill patients.
- TISS is utilized in the USA, Canada and abroad for many purposes:
- # Determining severity of illness
- # Establishing nurse’patient ratios in the ICU
- # Assessing current utilization of ICU beds
- # Establishing future needs and numbers of ICU beds
- # Expresses work activities in statistical terms.
- TISS has been incorporated as an intergral part of the Acute Physiologic and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE). Page 80.
- The comparative scores of TISS and APACHE enables us to see trends in the type of nursing care (TISS) provided for certain acutely levels (APACHE), for a specific type of diagnosis.
- Reviewing both scores can help determine whether certain nursing activities can be redirected or standardized in certain types of critically ill patients without affecting patient mortality or morbidity.
- Each of the most common ICU nursing activities is weighted from 1 to 4 point. More points indicate that greater nursing management is required.
- A high daily TISS score indicates an increase in nursing workload.