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Learning Objective 1: Identify the duration and content of nurses’ verbal communication with Unconscious or Sedated Patients in an Intensive Care Unit.
Learning Objective 2: 2. Recognize the need of nurses’ verbal communication with Unconscious or Sedated in Patients in an Intensive Care Unit.
Verbal communication is an important aspect of nursing care, whether the patient is conscious or unconscious. Unconscious patients in Intensive Care Units (ICU) can develop sensory overload or sensory deprivation if there is lack of verbal communication with them. Although this phenomenon has been explored extensively in the western context no information was available on this topic in the Pakistani context. This study aims to assess the nature of verbal communication of nurses with adult intubated, unconscious, or sedated and ventilated patients in ICU.
Study methodology/Results/Conclusions
A quantitative descriptive design was used to conduct this study. Ethical approval was sought from the Institutional Ethical Review Committee. Universal sampling was employed to select the participants. 31 ICU nurses were observed, using the time sampling method. Each nurse was observed for 4 hour episodes, for a total of 124 hours. Results of this study indicated that a small proportion of time i.e. only 0.056% was spent by the ICU nurses in actual verbal communication with their patients. In addition, it clearly stood out that most (0.055%) of the content of the verbal communication by the ICU nurses was related to giving information about the task and procedure. Findings of this study have identified the actual practices of nurses’ verbal communication in ICU. The study findings have highlighted the need for nurses to be vigilant and to make deliberate efforts for verbal communication with unconscious/sedated patients.
Implications for nursing educational practice
The findings of the study have important implications for nursing services and nursing education, in general and for the nursing staff and the management of the ICU at AKUH, in particular. The results highlighted the need of awareness, continuing education, training, and skills development in the field of nurse-patient communication, for the nursing staff (novice or experienced), and nursing students.
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