Attitudes of intensive care unit nurses towards communicating with patients unable to speak

The aim of this study was to determine the attitudes of intensive care unit nurses towards communicating with unconscious or conscious intubated patients unable to speak.

Communication is one of the most important tools in patient care and is more important in intensive care units because many patients are unable to communicate verbally due to illness or treatment.

This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on 174 nurses working in intensive care units. They were selected by convenience sampling method. Data were collected by a researcher-made questionnaire through self-report. This questionnaire had two sections of views on communication with unconscious or conscious intubated patients unable to talk and factors related to non-communication with these patients which was completed either in paper or electronic form. The data were analyzed in SPSS version 26 using descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation.

The results showed that the majority of the studied units (94.3 percent) had a positive attitude towards communicating with patients with speech disabilities admitted to intensive care units. It was also found that large number of patients, nurse's reluctance to work in intensive care units, loading of unprofessional tasks, psychological fatigue, and no mastery in communicative skills are more associated with communicating with this group of patients.

According to the positive attitude of nurses towards communicating with unconscious or conscious intubated patients unable to speak, this positive attitude can be used to improve nurses' communication performance. In addition, it is necessary to improve the quality and quantity of communication with patients with speech problems through management measures to control some factors related to communicating with patients with speech impediments.