Development of National Standards of Nursing Care for the Prevention of Venous Thromboembolism

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a major health concern, which is associated with high mortality and morbidity and treatment costs. Although prevention is considered a priority is in this regard, there are no specific standards in Iran based on the specific conditions and care culture for the prevention of pulmonary embolism. The present study aimed to develop national standards of nursing care for the prevention of VTE.

In this descriptive study, the care standards for the prevention of pulmonary embolism were extracted from valid references. At the second stage, a checklist was prepared, and its validity and reliability were confirmed. Finally, the Delphi technique was used to finalize the respective checklists at the first stage by 12 experts and the second stage by 120 experts, with the consensus of over 70%. Data analysis was performed in SPSS.

The obtained results were finalized in four phases. The first phase was patient evaluation (four standards in the form of 67 checklists), the second phase was prophylaxis (three standards in the form of 22 checklists), the third phase was drug management and preventive measures (two standards in the form of 24 checklists), and the fourth phase was the nursing process (four standards in the form of 155 checklist).

Based on the results of the third stage, the standards with lower consensus than 70% were eliminated, and the standards with higher consensus than 70% were established. It is hoped that these standards would improve the quality of nursing care and contribute to the prevention of pulmonary embolism in Iran.