Nurses and the best practices in the management of delirium: cross-sectional study

Abstract

Objectives: to describe nurses' agreement to regarding the assessment, diagnosis and preventionof delirium in the Intensive Care Unit and to verify the association of agreement with the sociodemographic profile of professionals. Method: cross-sectional study carried out in the general and cardiac Intensive Care Units of a high-complexity hospital, between January and February 2018. Sixty one nurses participated in an electronic survey with seventeen questions, excluding those who were on vacation or sick leave during the data collection. Results: The median of statements with high agreement was 11 per professional, with 64% of the sample obtaining low agreement. The statements with the best agreement included risk factors, assessment algorithm, nurse's role and knowledge about signs of the syndrome. Conclusion: Nurses showed low agreement with the guidelines for best practices in the management of delirium and no association was found between high agreement and sociodemographic characteristics.