Abstract
Objectives: To correlate the incidence of pressure injury (PI) with the average time of nursing care in an intensive care unit (ICU). Method: Epidemiological, observational, retrospective study, carried out in the ICU of a university hospital. Data were collected by consulting the PI incidence and the average nursing care time from ICU databases between 2010 and 2014. Measures of central tendency and variability, and Pearson’s correlation coefficient were used for data analysis. Results: The average incidence of PI between 2010 and 2014 was 10.83% (SD = 2.87) and the average time spent in nursing care for patients admitted to the ICU was 15 hours (SD = 0.94). There was no statistically significant correlation between the incidence of PI and the nursing care time (r = -0.17; p = 0.199), however, the results suggested an overload on the nursing team. Conclusion: This study confirms the importance of implementing and reassessing the effectiveness of preventive care protocols for PI, in addition to warning about the work overload of nursing in assisting critically ill patients.
Highlights
The National Pressure Injury Advisory Panel (NPIAP) defines pressure injury (PI) as lesions affecting the skin and/ or underlying tissues that are usually located on a bone prominence, caused by intense pressure or a combination of pressure and shear, which may be related to the use of medical devices and other artifacts[4,5]
It can be observed that the average hours of nursing care spent to patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) of the university hospital in question, in all months from 2010 to 2014, were lower than those indicated by Cofen[24], which may suggest work overload of the nursing team
The results of this study identified a decrease in the incidence of PI compared to previous studies conducted in the same institution, which can be attributed to the efficacy of the implementation of the prevention protocol in the ICU and the effectiveness of the continuous adaptations of such measures, making the cases of PI increasingly smaller
Summary
Studies on this topic highlight that one of the adverse events that most affect hospitalized patients is the pressure injury (PI)[1]. Pressure injuries cause pain and discomfort, increase length of hospitalization and morbimortality, lower the quality of life of the patient and his family, generate high costs to health institutions and increase the workload of the nursing team. They are considered avoidable adverse events, called “key indicators”, to measure the quality of nursing care and the level of patient safety in a hospital environment[1,2,3]. The NPIAP classifies PIs in four stages (from 1 to 4); unstageable PI; deep tissue PI; there are medical device related PI, which are classified in the same way as other PIs; and PIs in mucous membranes that are not classified due to the anatomy of the tissue[4,5]
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