Objective:To explore the nursing work items and the technical difficulty in post anesthesia care unit, so as to provide the basis for accurate calculation of anesthesia nursing workload and reasonable matching of human resources.Methods:The primary and secondary indicators of the nursing working system in post anesthesia care unit were determined through the literature review and group discussion. Delphi method was used to revise the indicators and evaluate the importance and difficulty degree of the indicators. Finally, analytic hierarchy process and linear weighted sum method were used to calculate the weight value and difficulty coefficient of each index.Results:The positive coefficients of the experts in the two rounds were 100.00%, the authority coefficients of the experts were 0.90 and 0.96, the variation coefficients ranged from 0.000 to 0.342 and 0.042 to 0.307, and the Kendall coefficients were 0.239 and 0.273 (both P<0.01). The evaluation index system of the difficulty of nursing work in post anesthesia care unit was finally composed of 10 primary indicators and 85 secondary indicators. The weight of the primary index ranged from 0.016 4 to 0.186 4, and the weight of the secondary index ranged from 0.000 8 to 0.064 3. The standardized difficulty coefficient of the secondary index ranged from 1.02 to 1.59. Conclusions:The evaluation index system of the difficulty of nursing work items in post anesthesia care unit was comprehensive and the difficulty coefficient was in line with the actual clinical work in this study, which provides reference for the follow-up scientific calculation of nursing workload and human resources matching in post anesthesia care unit.