Nursing in critical care
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Nursing in critical care · Nov 2007
Multicenter StudyAn exploration of the handover process of critically ill patients between nursing staff from the emergency department and the intensive care unit.
The transfer of information between nurses from emergency departments (EDs) and critical care units is essential to achieve a continuity of effective, individualized and safe patient care. There has been much written in the nursing literature pertaining to the function and process of patient handover in general nursing practice; however, no studies were found pertaining to this handover process between nurses in the ED environment and those in the critical care environment. The aim was to explore the process of patient handover between ED and intensive care unit (ICU) nurses when transferring a patient from ED to the ICU. ⋯ Nurses from both settings recognized the importance of the information given and received during handover and deemed it to have an important role in influencing quality and continuity of care. Nurses from both departments would benefit from a structured framework or aide memoir to guide the handover process. Collaborative work between the nursing teams in both departments would further enhance understanding of each others' roles and expectations.
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Nursing in critical care · Nov 2007
Controlled Clinical TrialEarplugs and eye masks: do they improve critical care patients' sleep?
Disturbed sleep and sleep deprivation is common in patients in critical care settings. Noise and inappropriate use of light/dark cycles are two of the causes of sleep interruptions. The purpose of the study was to evaluate eye masks and earplugs to help control patients' exposure to noise and light within the critical care environment. ⋯ At a cost of 2.50 pounds sterling/patient, earplugs and eye masks were a relatively cheap intervention with notable improvements for some critically ill patients. Further research is required with a larger sample size, plus an examination of both earplugs and eye masks separately. Offering patient's earplugs and eye masks to improve sleep should be considered as a matter of routine nursing practice, this should include time to show patients how to use and try them out for comfort.
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Nursing in critical care · Nov 2007
Randomized Controlled TrialReducing the risk of ventilator-acquired pneumonia through head of bed elevation.
It has been suggested that placing critically ill ventilated patients in a semirecumbent position minimizes the likelihood of nosocomial pneumonia. ⋯ There was a trend towards a reduction in VAP in the patients nursed at 45 degrees. However, because of the sample size this difference did not reach statistical significance.