[Identification of care needs of patients with and without the use of a classification instrument].

OBJECTIVE To analyze the agreement and disagreement between the assessments by applying or not a patient classification instrument, and to investigate the association between the agreement and personal and professional characteristics of the evaluators. METHOD This is a descriptive exploratory study. 105 patients were hospitalized in a teaching hospital in the state of Sao Paulo, using the kappa statistic (weighted) and the Bootstrap method. RESULTS The agreement between the assessments were​​: k(w) 0.87 (instrument x internal evaluator), k(w) 0.78 (instrument x external evaluator) and k(w) 0.76 (between evaluators) and the influence of some personal and professional characteristics. The assessments conducted through the use of an instrument contemplated a greater number of areas of care in relation to when the instrument was not applied. CONCLUSION The use of this instrument is recommended in order to more effectively identify care needs of patients.