Effect of Nursing Guideline on Performance of Nurses regarding Prevention of Patients' Fall in Intensive Care Units

Abstract

Falls are the most common adverse event among intensive care units patients, directly contributing to human pain and distress and increased health care costs. Complications associated with falls among ICUs patients can result in death, disability, psychological distress, and increased hospital length of stay.Yet, falls continue to be a serious safety threat, especially for acutely ill, hospitalized patients.Aim:the aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of nurses' guideline on performance of nurses regarding prevention of patients' fall in intensive care units.Study design: a quasi experimental study; Subject:all available nurses caring for patients wererecruited from neurological intensive care units and medicine intensive care units at Ain Shams University Hospital. Tool: consisted of self administered questionnaire and nurses practice observational checklist applied in 3 phases (pre, immediate & post3 months). The results:of this study showed that60% of nurses had unsatisfactory level of knowledge and 56% of them had unsatisfactory level of practice pre implementation of nursing guidelines which improved significantly post implementing the nursing guideline.This study concluded that two third of nurses had inadequate knowledge and about more than half of them had unsatisfactory level of practice regarding prevention of fall in intensive care units pre implementation of the guideline.Moreover, nursing guideline had statistically significant positive effect on nurses’ performance (knowledge & practice) regarding prevention of fall in intensive care units three months after implementing it. Recommendation the importance of conducting periodic in-service training advanced care programs for nurses in intensive care units for improving their performance and quality of care provided to such group of patients.