ICU Delirium
The article I chose is called “Delirium assessment in intensive care units: practices and perceptions of Turkish nurses” by Aysel Özsaban PhD. The aim of the article was to identify current practices of intensive care nurses regarding the delirium assessment and to find factors that affect these perceptions. Being an ICU nurse is a very important job, it is different from any floor in the hospital. The patients are more critical and the nurse to patient ratio is more intimate. It is very important for a nurse to know how to do an appropriate delirium assessment. Data were collected from five Turkish public hospitals using a structured survey questionnaire. The study sample comprised 301 nurses who agreed to participate. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics. Results showed more than half of the nurses performed delirium assessments. However, the proportion of nurses who use delirium assessment tools was quite low. Almost all of the nurses perceived delirium as a problem and serious problem for ICU patients. The patient group least monitored for delirium was that of unconscious patients. While most nurses know the importance of doing a delirium assessment and understand this is a serious problem, the proportion of those who perform routine delirium assessments was less. It was found that delirium assessment practices of nurses were affected from their perceptions of delirium and the implementation of patient-centred care delivery.
I would say that I agree with this article because in nursing school we are taught that doing a good assessment could make a difference in the care that we provide for a patient. Just because most of the patients we do a delirium assessment on are sedated, does not mean we have to skip important steps. Steps needed to reduce this problem is to teach nurses the correct way to do this assessment and the importance of it. There should be classes that help nurses understand and comprehend what exactly they are assessing for.
Thank You, Ashleigh
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.summit.csuci.edu:2048/doi/10.1111/nicc.12127/full
