Critical Care Nurse's Knowledge and Adherence to Evidence-Base Guidelines for Prevention of Ventilator Associated Pneumonia in Palestine Hospitals رسالة ماجستير

Abstract

Background: Ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP) is a common complication for patients who connected on mechanical ventilator (MV) in the intensive care units (ICUs), approximately 90% of pneumonia developed on ICU was observed on patient who connected by MV, those who have been intubated for more than 24 hours are at a 6 to 21 times higher risk of getting VAP than patients who have only been on mechanical ventilation for a short period of time. For that, the aim of current study to assess critical care nurses‟ knowledge and adherence to evidence base guidelines (EBGs) for prevent the occurrence of VAP. Methodology: The study was applied in all Palestinian governmental ICUs in 2022, quantitative data was collected using self-questionnaire completed by the participant nurses (n=213) were selected from 13 hospitals (all governmental ICUs) with a response rate 84.9%. Descriptive and inferential statistic were used to assess ICU nurse's knowledge and adherence to the EBGs for prevention VAP. Result: The study results revealed that ICU nurses‟ mean knowledge scores according to all hospitals was (50.8%). Overall, our findings demonstrate that nurses‟ knowledge of VAP guidelines is average, and there was a significant difference ( -value in the knowledge level of respondents based on qualification. The study found that nurses‟ adherence to evidence-based guidelines was an acceptable (mean = , 69.2%) and no substantial differences in adherence level were found based on respondent‟s characteristics. Moreover, the coefficient of determination ( ) value of suggests that the variation in the mean adherence scores is explained by the knowledge level. VI Conclusion: ICU nurses have average knowledge to EBGs for prevention VAP and acceptable level of adherence to evidence-based guidelines.