Introduction: Lack of application of the nursing process can reduce the quality of care so this study aimed to diagnose the nursing process barriers from the view of the Intensive Care Units’ nurses.

  Methods : This cross-sectional descriptive study has been done on 63 nurses of Intensive Care Units that were chosen from selected hospitals in Tehran, based on cluster-random sampling method in 2010. The data gathered using a researcher made questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive-analytical statistical method.

  Results: The most important individual barriers from the view of nurses were lack of sufficient information about concept of the nursing process (79.4%) and lack of belief in doing the patient care according to the nursing process (74.6%) and inadequate learning about the nursing process in intensive care units (71.4%). In addition, the most important management barriers were lack of enough time for doing the nursing process due to excessive number of the patients (84.1%), lack of authorities' support for implementation of the nursing process (76.2%) and submitting non-nursing duties to the nurses (76.2%).

  Conclusion: Health care authorities must help in promotion of the health care with employing sufficient nurses, educating them and providing necessary situations for nursing process.