Background & objective: High workload may lead to increase human errors, compromise quality and safety of care, and reduce the nurses’ quality of working life. The aim of this study is to determine the task-induced workload in nursing.

Methods: This is a descriptive analytical study. All of 214 nurses of one of the educational hospital took part in. After obtaining informed consent from participants, data were collected based on NASA-TLX questionnaire and the desired level assumed less than 50%. Analysis of data was performed by descriptive statistics and Anova in SPSS software (version 11. 0) at significant level of 0.05.

Results: The results showed that perceived mental pressure for nurses is more than other NASA-TLX subscales (P< .001). Also, the mean perceived workload was more than 50%. However, mean workload score of NASA-TLX showed significant correlation with age (P< .001), work experience (P< .001), shift work (P< .02), and department (P< .001).

Conclusion: The results show that effective programs will be required to reduce the work load, and to enhance nurses' performance.