Factors Affecting Clinical Outcomes for Patient with Nasogastric Tube Feeding at Critical Care Unit

Abstract

A patient in ICU who cannot take food orally requires either enteral or parenteral nutritional support. The enteral nutrition mimics the normal gastrointestinal response following the ingestion of a meal, with the exception of the oral phase .Enteral nutrition may be given by various modes such as bolus, intermittent or continuous technique and combination of these methods. There are different routes of providing enteral nutrition to the patients. These routes are through nose, oral cavity, trans-oesophageal feeding and percutaneous enteric route (Sharma, 2016). Nurses spend more time at patients’ bedside comparing other health care delivers and are liable to permanent evaluation of the patients, they play a critical, significant role in identifying malnutrition susceptible patients, assessing nutrition adequacy and management of nasogastric tube feeding, The role of nurses is important in the feeding tube insertion, performance of nasogastric tube feeding and patient Care ,their proper performances in nasogastric tube feeding influence the patients’ clinical outcomes (Babapour et al, 2016). Nurses also must keep their eyes on nasogastric feeding complications and clinical outcomes as aspiration of feed which can occur without obvious evidence