.Implications for Evidence-Based Practice: Achieving Quality Outcomes
Evidence-based practice (EBP) is the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.5 All health care professionals, including nurses, need to have access to up-to-date evidence or knowledge in order to maintain best practices.6 We propose a select number of areas for practice improvement and enhancement of the evidence base for nursing care of patients receiving mechanical ventilation to achieve quality outcomes.
A goal for patients receiving ventilatory support is to wean as soon and as safely as possible. What is the best evidence currently available in the area of effective practices for weaning? What is nursing’s role in contributing to successful weaning? What are the most effective strategies for management of anxiety, pain, and patients’ positioning to promote weaning from mechanical ventilation? What are effective strategies for collaborating with respiratory care practitioners to promote professional communication to achieve weaning goals?
An important standard of care is to reduce ventilator time, thereby reducing complications such as ventilator-associated pneumonia, tracheal stenosis, and ventilator-induced lung injury. How can initiatives and practice standards best be tailored for an individual unit, for example, for prevention of ventilator-associated pneumonia?
Ventilator technology is frequently changing and has become very sophisticated and complex. Ventilator manufacturers and the respiratory care academic community have not adopted a standardized system for classifying and describing ventilation modes.7 What are the best ways for nurses to keep current with this complex technology?
The growing trend toward use of daily sedation reduction protocols and sedation assessment scales along with spontaneous breathing trials8–10 has implications for practice as patients receiving mechanical ventilation become more awake and alert. Likewise, more attention to sedative administration regimens has great relevance to nursing care and the management of these medications.11 These practice changes may result in more interaction and more requests from patients, which may be a challenge for busy nurses to deal with or have time for. What are the care processes or improvements that need to be instituted to support the added time nurses need to provide patient-centered care and effective communication?
Nurses already involved in or contemplating undertaking quality improvement and EBP initiatives can access data from many sources to locate the best available evidence and to tailor protocols to meet the needs of their patients. A few resources available to nurses for locating best practices related to the care of patients receiving mechanical ventilation or other EBP protocols include American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) practice alerts (www.aacn.org/practicealerts), the Joanna Briggs Institute (www.joannabriggs.edu), and the Cochrane Collaborative (www.cochrane.org).
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Implications for Nursing Research to Achieve Quality Outcomes
Several nursing groups have proposed research agendas and priorities related to patients receiving mechanical ventilatory support. Most prominent of these are the research priorities of the AACN, the American Thoracic Society (ATS) Nursing Assembly’s Research Priorities in Respiratory Nursing, and the National Institute of Nursing Research’s areas of emphasis related to symptom management (see Table).
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Table
Pulmonary/mechanical ventilation research priorities of national nursing organizations
Although many of these priorities are 10 years old or more, progress in moving the science forward to advance nursing care of patients receiving mechanical ventilation has been scant in some areas. For example, the ATS Nursing Assembly’s research priority surrounding methods for improving communication between patients and nurses still requires research attention. One of the utmost needs in achieving patient-centered care and quality patient outcomes is in the area of promoting effective communication with patients receiving mechanical ventilation.2 Imagine the challenge of conveying your fears about making treatment decisions if health care professionals are only asking yes/no questions? Other than the work of Dr Mary Beth Happ and colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh, precious little work is being done in this area. What are effective ways of improving communication and the quality of communication among patients making important care or treatment decisions or participating in end-of-life decisions and discussions?
The research priorities surrounding symptom management articulated by the National Institute of Nursing Research and the AACN also require attention. Although only a limited selection of complementary therapies are addressed in an article by Tracy and Chlan,3 there is great opportunity for research that tests these adjunctive interventions for their influence on common symptoms experienced by patients receiving mechanical ventilation, including anxiety, agitation, and dyspnea, particularly during weaning trials.
Long-term ventilator-dependent patients need complementary/alternative treatments that enhance their quality of life while effectively managing their anxiety and dyspnea because pharmacological agents are rarely used in rehabilitation settings to manage these symptoms. Much work is needed in this area to establish the scientific underpinnings and the evidence base of these treatment techniques as well as dissemination via clinical practice guidelines in order to empower nurses to implement those safe and effective methods into their practice.
Other factors that might influence the paucity of new research in the area of mechanical ventilation include a lack of availability of funding, the rarity of nurses or nursing-led research teams dedicated to research careers with ventilator patients, and the sometimes daunting challenges of conducting research with ventilator patients. Staff nurses may shun the idea of conducting research on their respective units given that they may lack expertise or feel intimidated by this endeavor. However, Dr Mary Lou Sole, in an interview in AACN Bold Voices,12 reminds us that when research questions come from staff nurses, the nurses get involved and are “hooked.” Research becomes part of the unit’s culture when staff nurses become involved.12(p7