nurses opinions and practice in mouth care for icu patients under mechanical ventilation

nurses opinions and practice in mouth care for icu patients under mechanical ventilation     adib hajbagari m [1] *, ansari a [2]     received: 3 apr, 2012 accepted: 25 jun , 2012     abstract:   background and aim: despite evidences on association between ventilator associated pneumonia and inadequate mouth care of mechanically ventilated patients, no studies are available on the performance of iranian nurses in this area. this study was designed to compare the perceptions of nurses about icu mechanically ventilated patients' mouth care and their actual practices.   material and methods: this cross-sectional study was conducted on 90 icu nurses in different hospitals in kashan, isfahan and najaf-abad. a questionnaire including demographic information, frequency of oral assessment and oral care, use of checklist, priority of oral care, routine materials and equipments for oral care, and barriers to oral care in icu was used. nursing reports of 45 patients, concerning care records were evaluated. collected data were analyzed using spss software.   results: oral care obtained the seventh rank and a mean score of 5.7 on a scale of 10. only 29% of participants had been trained in this field. the oral cares were ignored by 20% of participants in their usual duties. suctioning was the most common method used in 83.3% of cases. high load of writing tasks and personnel shortages were the major barriers to oral care. only 20% of the charts included a report on oral care of mechanically ventilated patients.   conclusion: the nursing personnel gave a low priority to the oral care of mechanically ventilated patients. results showed the lack of nursing knowledge in this area therefore re-training programs in the field of oral care are recommended and the supervision should be strengthened.   keywords: mouth care, nurse, opinions, practice, mechanical ventilation     address :kashan, faculty of nursing and midwifery, kashsn university of medical sciences, department of medical surgical nursing   tel: (+98) 9133630272   email : [email protected]   [1] associate professor, faculty of nursing and midwifery, kashan university of medical sciences, kashan, (corresponding author)   [2] msc , fatemeh zahra hospital, najafabad, isfahan university of medical science