Critical care nurses' experiences of caring challenges during post-resuscitation period: a qualitative content analysis

BACKGROUND

Patients in the post-resuscitation period experience critical conditions and require high-quality care. Identifying the challenges that critical care nurses encounter when caring for resuscitated patients is essential for improving the quality of their care.

AIM

This study aimed to identify the challenges encountered by critical care nurses in providing care during the post-resuscitation period.

METHODS

A qualitative study was conducted using semi-structured interviews. Sixteen nurses working in the intensive care units of three teaching hospitals were selected through purposive sampling. The Data collected were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

RESULTS

Participants experienced individual, interpersonal, and organizational challenges when providing post-resuscitation care. The most significant challenges include inadequate clinical knowledge and experience, poor management and communication skills, lack of support from nurse managers, role ambiguity, risk of violence, and inappropriate attitudes of physicians towards nurses' roles. Additionally, nurses expressed a negative attitude towards resuscitated patients.

CONCLUSION

Critical care nurses face several challenges in providing care for resuscitated patients. To enhance the quality of post-resuscitation care, address the challenges effectively and improve long-time survival it is crucial to implement interventions such as In-service education, post-resuscitation briefing, promotion of interprofessional collaboration among healthcare teams, providing sufficient human resources, clarifying nurses' roles in the post-resuscitation period and increasing support from nursing managers.

Factors Influencing How Intensive Care Unit Nurses Allocate Their Time

Spending time with the patient is essential for intensive care unit (ICU) nurses to detect clinical change. This article reports on an examination of factors influencing nurses’ activity time allocation. Data were analyzed from a prospective time and motion study of medical ICU nurses. Nurse demographic data and observation, electronic locator technology, and electronic medical record log data were collected over 12 days from 11 registered nurses. Charlson Co-Morbidity Index and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment scores were calculated for patient assignments. Nurses averaged 78.04 ( SD = 47.85) min per patient on activities in the patient room. Years of ICU nursing experience and the patient’s Charlson Co-Morbidity Index was significantly associated with time spent in the patient’s room. Neither nursing education nor specialty certification was found to influence time spent in a patient’s room. Using technology can advance understanding of nurses’ time allocation leading to interventions optimizing time spent with the patient.

Automated Deterioration Detection Using Electronic Medical Record Data in Intensive Care Unit Patients: A Systematic Review

Timely detection of deterioration in status for intensive care unit patients can be problematic due to variation in data availability and the necessity of integrating data from multiple sources. This can lead to opaqueness of clinical trends and failure to rescue. Automated deterioration detection using electronic medical record data can reduce the risk of failure to rescue. This review describes the automated use of electronic medical record data in identifying deterioration in intensive care unit patients. PubMed and Google Scholar were used to retrieve publications between January 1, 2006, and March 31, 2016. Six studies met inclusion criteria: intensive care unit patient focus, description of electronic medical record data use in automated patient deterioration detection, and presence of predictive, sensitivity, and/or specificity values. Detection focused on specific clinical events such as infection; data sources were electronic medical record-populated databases. Detection algorithms incorporated laboratory results, vital signs, medication orders, and respiratory therapy and radiology documentation. Positive and negative predictive values and sensitivity and specificity measures varied across studies. Three systems generated clinician alerts. Automated deterioration detection using electronic medical record data may be an important aid in caring for intensive care unit patients, but its usefulness is limited by variable electronic medical record detection approaches and performance.

The Culture of Nurses in a Critical Care Unit

Critical care nurses have to adapt to a fast-paced and stressful environment by functioning within their own culture. The objective of this study was to explore and describe the culture of critical care nurses with the purpose of facilitating recognition of wholeness in critical care nurses. The study had a qualitative, exploratory, descriptive, and contextual design. The ethnographic study included data triangulation of field notes written during 12 months of ethnographic observations, 13 interviews from registered nurses, and three completed diaries. Coding and analysis of data revealed patterns of behavior and interaction. The culture of critical care nurses was identified through patterns of patient adoption, armor display, despondency because of the demands to adjust, sibling-like teamwork, and non-support from management and medical doctors. An understanding of the complexity of these patterns of behavior and interaction within the critical care nursing culture is essential for transformation in the practice of critical care nursing.

Evaluation of a configural vital signs display for intensive care unit nurses

OBJECTIVE

The objective was to evaluate a configural vital signs (CVS) display designed to support rapid detection and identification of physiological deterioration by graphically presenting patient vital signs data.

BACKGROUND

Current display technology in the intensive care unit (ICU) is not optimized for fast recognition and identification of physiological changes in patients. To support nurses more effectively, graphical or configural vital signs displays need to be developed and evaluated.

METHOD

A CVS display was developed based on findings from studies of the cognitive work of ICU nurses during patient monitoring. A total of 42 ICU nurses interpreted data presented either in a traditional, numerical format (n = 21) or on the CVS display (n = 21). Response time and accuracy in clinical data interpretation (i.e., identification of patient status) were assessed across four scenarios.

RESULTS

Data interpretation speed and accuracy improved significantly in the CVS display condition; for example, in one scenario nurses required only half of the time for data interpretation and showed up to 1.9 times higher accuracy in identifying the patient state compared to the numerical display condition.

CONCLUSION

Providing patient information in a configural display with readily visible trends and data variability can improve the speed and accuracy of data interpretation by ICU nurses.

APPLICATION

Although many studies, including this one, support the use of configural displays, the vast majority of ICU monitoring displays still present clinical data in numerical format. The introduction of configural displays in clinical monitoring has potential to improve patient safety.