Revista Brasileira de terapia intensiva
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Rev Bras Ter Intensiva · Jul 2014
Multicenter StudyThe knowledge of intensive care professionals about diarrhea.
To assess the opinions and practices of intensive care professionals with regard to diarrhea in critically ill patients. ⋯ Different opinions and practices were observed in intensive care professionals with regard to diarrhea.
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Perspectives on invasive and noninvasive ventilatory support for critically ill patients are evolving, as much evidence indicates that ventilation may have positive effects on patient survival and the quality of the care provided in intensive care units in Brazil. For those reasons, the Brazilian Association of Intensive Care Medicine (Associação de Medicina Intensiva Brasileira - AMIB) and the Brazilian Thoracic Society (Sociedade Brasileira de Pneumologia e Tisiologia - SBPT), represented by the Mechanical Ventilation Committee and the Commission of Intensive Therapy, respectively, decided to review the literature and draft recommendations for mechanical ventilation with the goal of creating a document for bedside guidance as to the best practices on mechanical ventilation available to their members. ⋯ The experts were divided into pairs that were charged with performing a thorough review of the international literature on each topic. All the experts met at the Forum on Mechanical Ventilation, which was held at the headquarters of AMIB in São Paulo on August 3 and 4, 2013, to collaboratively draft the final text corresponding to each sub-topic, which was presented to, appraised, discussed and approved in a plenary session that included all 58 participants and aimed to create the final document.
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Rev Bras Ter Intensiva · Jul 2014
Nursing Activities Score and workload in the intensive care unit of a university hospital.
The nursing workload consists of the time spent by the nursing staff to perform the activities for which they are responsible, whether directly or indirectly related to patient care. The aim of this study was to evaluate the nursing workload in an adult intensive care unit at a university hospital using the Nursing Activities Score (NAS) instrument. ⋯ We observed a high nursing workload in this study. These results can assist in planning the size of the staff required. The workload was influenced by clinical characteristics, including an increased workload required for emergency surgical patients and patients who died.