Nurses knowledge, attitude and practice in prevention of ICU syndrome

Intensive care unit ICU syndrome is a disorder, in which patients in an ICU or a similar setting experience anxiety, hallucination and become paranoid, severely disoriented in time and place, very agitated, or even violent, etc. The aim of this study was to assess knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of nurses with regards to prevention of ICU syndrome (Delirium). Subjects of this research were 56 nurses with including criteria of registration in nursing, university degree and at least one month experience of working in open heart surgery ICUs. The data was gathered from 3 clusters in university hospitals equipped with open heart surgery ICUs in Tehran. All subjects were asked to fill in a questionnaire. Moreover all subjects were observed in all shifts. During observation, two researchers observed each subject simultaneously to achieve higher accuracy of observations. Descriptive and analytic statistics were applied to analysis the data. The finding of the study showed that more than 53% of the subjects had passed a continuing education course, but less than 46% of them never passed a training course on ICU. According to this research, subjects, work experience in ICUs had significant relation on their knowledge with regard to prevention of ICU psychosis. However, it has not significant relation to their attitude and skill. According to the results of the study, subjects have little chance to be familiar with the concepts and elements of ICU syndrome in their university program. The finding also indicated that many subjects in this study were not familiar with the important concepts such as sleep deprivation, sensory overload and sensory deprivation, etc. Ongoing progression in high-tech ICUs brings about continuing nursing education programs for all nurses. The results also showed that stress factor in ICU, such as high mortality, isolation, high workload etc. Gradually influences nurses,attitude in ICU. So, it is strongly recommended to consider rotation of nurses in order not to impose high stress to ICU nurses.