Effect of Instructional Guideline on Nurses' Performance Regarding Weaning of Patients from Mechanical Ventilation

Abstract

Background: Weaning a patient from mechanical ventilation (MV) and eventually to extubation is a challenge for critical care nurses who play a vital role in assessing a patient’s readiness for weaning. Aim: Evaluate the effect of instructional guideline on nurses' performance regarding patients' MV weaning off. Hypothesis: The implementation of instructional guideline will have a positive effect on nurses' performance through improvement of nurses' knowledge and practice regarding the patients' MV weaning.MV. Design: A quasi-experimental design was utilized to conduct this study. Setting: The study was conducted at the Intensive care units in Ain Shams University Hospital. Subjects: A Convenient. Sample. of all available (40) nurses who working at the previously mentioned setting. Tools: Data gathering utilised two instruments. I. Nurses' Self- Administered Questionnaire: It had two components: Demographics of nurses in Part 1; knowledge of nurses towards weaning patients from MV in Part 2. II. Checklists for observing how nurses were weaning patients off of MV to determine their level of practise. Results: the mean age for nurses under study was 30.9±8.8, 47.5% of them were within the age group between 25 to ≤35 years. 62.5% of the nurses were female, 65% were married. 42.5% of the nurses were had diploma nursing. There was a positive correlation with highly statistically remarkable relation between the total score of nurses' knowledge and practice after implementation of instructional guideline about weaning of patients from MV. Conclusion: there was a statistically notable improvement after instructional guidelines implementation regarding nurses' performance related to weaning of patients on ventilators. Recommendation: Critical care units in hospitals should be equipped by Arabic instructional guideline for nurses' performance weaning for patients on ventilators to improve the quality of patient’s care and decrease the complications for this patient.