Objective: to analyze the professional experience of intensive care nurses and its influence on their work activities in the continuous hemodialysis process and patient safety in the intensive care unit within the scope of the collaborative model. Method: qualitative and exploratory research, based on the systemic paradigm of patient safety, developed at the Intensive Care Unit of a private institution in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There were 23 nurse participants who had been working

more »

... or more than three months in study scenery and in direct contact with continuous hemodialysis. The data were produced from June to October of 2016 by means of observation, analyzed using thick description as well as semi-structured interviews, and then submitted to the content analysis technique. Results: were organized in two categories: the first one portrays the influence of the professional working experience on the safety of nurses' performance, which verified that in relation to continuous hemodialysis, inexperienced nurses follow guidelines and manuals, without a complete evaluation of this care situation and face difficulties in the performance of everyday care. The second category demonstrates the impact of the nurse´s inexperience on the occurrence of active errors, evidencing actions that result in the occurrence of adverse events. Conclusion: the insertion of inexperienced nurses is a latent condition in the investigated system that results in the occurrence of incidents in the continuous hemodialysis process, requiring the improvement of the collaborative model through the systematic monitoring of the performance of these professionals, such as the proposal of a safety barrier.