• Asghar Khalifezadeh, Shima Safazadeh, Tayebeh Mehrabi, and Bahram Amin Mansour.
• Department of Medical surgical Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
• Iran J Nurs Midwifery Res. 2011 Jan 1;16(1):106-12.

BackgroundDisease is an abnormal process that affects all aspects of the human life. The hospital environment and particularly the intensive care unit (ICU) causes stress in the patient and hi/her family. Delirium, due to its sudden onset and startle, unconsciousness, memory impairment, illusion and dynamic or sedentary behaviors, is known as one of the stressor agents. Despite its high prevalence and the high cost complications such as long term mechanical ventilation, hospital pneumonia, pressure ulcer, prolongation of hospitalization in the hospital or the intensive care units, performance reduction and increase in mortality, this disorder remains unknown in most cases. In line with the other treatment team members, nurses should also participate in controlling the discountable factors, helping patients to cope with uncontrollable factors and using pharmacological methods to manage the delirium and feature their own unique capacity more through quick recognition, reviewing the causes and providing scientific care in improving the quality of patient care and improving the patients' health status. Hence, this study aimed to review the effect of nursing interventions on delirium of the patients admitted to ICU of the neurosurgery ward in Al-Zahra hospital in Isfahan.MethodsA two-group multi-stage clinical trial study was carried out on 40 patients with hyperactive delirium admitted to ICU. The questionnaire included demographic data, Richmond Agitation Sedation Scale to assess the irritability rate and study method and also cognitive confusion in intensive care unit to determine delirium status of the study population. Simple sampling method was conducted and the study samples were randomly divided into two intervention and control groups. The following nursing interventions performed on the intervention group: assuring, emotional support, clear information and effective communication with the patients and their families and also allowing family visits twice a day. In the control group, the sample received the normal and routine ICU cares. The irritability and delirium severity status of the samples were analyzed on the day of admission and the fifth day using descriptive and inferential statistical methods and also SPSS software.ResultsStatistical analysis showed that although there was no significant difference between the groups on the first day of admission in terms of the irritability and delirium severity status, this was significant on the fifth day of the study. Wilcoxon test in the intervention and control groups indicated a significant difference between the study subjects in terms of the irritability and delirium severity status on the first day of admission and the fifth day which indicated the reduction in the irritability severity. But, this reduction was higher in the intervention group than in the control group. Furthermore, McNemar test showed that the number of the subjects with delirium in both groups reduced on the fifth day compared to the first day of admission and there was a significant difference between these two days, the number of samples without delirium in the intervention group was almost two times higher than that in the control group on the fifth day.ConclusionsNursing interventions are considered as one of the non-pharmacological methods in treating delirium and by using these methods appropriately in ICUs, the patients' hypoactive delirium can be reduced.

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