Neriman Zengin
Turkey
intensive care, mechanical ventilation, distress experience, patients experience, nursing care.
''5. Međunarodni kongres HDMSARIST-a'' i ''8. Međunarodni kongres WfCCN-a''
Šibenik, 12.-15. travnja 2012. godine
Purpose: Intensive care units provide services for critical patients. These are highly complex and active units involving special treatment methods through multidisciplinary team approach and hosting many biomedical devices. This complex and active environment causes patients to experience a number of emotional and physical problems. In this regard, this study was carried out to review the researches investigating the problems experienced by patients in intensive care units.
Methods: We conducted a systematic literature review of studies published between January 1995 and November 2011. Relevant journals and databases were searched, i.e. Medline and CINAHL. The search terms included ‘intensive care”, “mechanical ventilation”, “distress experience”, “patients experience”, and “nursing care”. Researches implemented on 18 years and older patients were included in the review. A total of 559 researches were screened. Consequently, there were 15 researches directly related to the subject, of which 6 researches contained unstructured questions, and 4 researches contained structured questions, while the rest of them consisted of 3 phenomenological, 1 quantitative and 2 prospective observational descriptive researches.
Findings: Patient experiences were classified as emotional and physical. The most common emotional experiences included fear, anxiety, hallucination/nightmare and depression (15 researches). On the other hand, the most common physical experiences included pain (15 researches), thirstiness (6 researches), insomnia (7 researches), inability to communicate (10 researches) and endotracheal tube problems (15 researches). Among the factors behind these problematic experiences, there are nursing applications, endotracheal aspiration, and noise caused by technological equipment and staff.
Conclusion: Nurses should be aware of these factors that could cause problematic experiences in critical patients, and they should make plans for nursing applications to prevent or reduce their occurrences.