In the critical areas of a hospital, the assistance provided by health professionals is focused primarily on the patient, however the attention to family members also turns out to be of great importance. The nursing staff is in charge of informing the family members about the care for their family member, how the unit works, the multidisciplinary team, how they should behave and what they can do for the patient during the visit. To date there are few studies that report data on the attention to families and the communication process of the nursing staff. In the present study, the perception of the nursing personnel about the communication process with the relatives of the patients admitted in the different critical areas (EMEA, UICA, UITA and UITP) of navy hospital was analyzed to estimate the reality of the healthcare practice of the nursing staff on this topic. The results revealed a quite evident difference between the female and male sexes of the nursing staff (71% and 29% respectively). The female group was found distributed among the four critical areas, while the male was found absent in the pediatric área (UITP). Nursing service communication was evaluated using the Scale “Nurse Activities for Communicating with Families (NACF)" questionary. The results of the questionnaire divided into three groups, were compared between the services that have more and less years of experience (UICA and EMEA) respectively). Despite the difference in years of experience, the communication of the staff of both services is similar, both of them practically never omit information about the treatment and care of the patient (UICA: 6.25% and EMEA: 0%), and they touch on religious topics, cultural (UICA: 31.25% and EMEA: 0%) and personal (UICA and EMEA: 0%), but not always. The results indicate that the personnel of the nursing service of the critical areas of navy hospital, regardless of their sex, age and years of experience, show the same interest on the topics to be dealt with the relatives of the patients who arrive in these areas.
