Missed nursing care: Its impact on nurses working in intensive care

BACKGROUND Missed nursing care continues to have a presence throughout New Zealand (NZ) hospitals. Missed nursing care can be a controversial and politically sensitive topic. Nurses are aware of these issues and the patient outcomes when care is missed, and it is their responses to this concern that the research explores. How missed nursing care impacts on the nurse currently suggests that nurses question their professional integrity and job satisfaction, and have feelings of guilt, concerns about patient safety, and ethical feelings of remorse. When nursing care is missed in the IC environment, patients are exposed to a much higher incidence of severe complications of that missed care. Many outsiders may look at the nature of the environment and its name Intensive Care and believe that missed nursing care is less expected in this area of nursing. AIM The aim of this research was to explore the impact on nurses working in IC units in NZ hospital settings when nursing care is missed, delayed or omitted. The aim of this research is to move away from the why and how of missed nursing care and to investigate the topic from the nurses’ perspective regarding the impact when nursing care is missed. METHODOLOGY This qualitative research used a descriptive approach, based on the interpretation and experiences of nurses working in IC. Narrative data were collected from the population group of six nurses working in an IC environment under the phenomenon study, missed nursing care. The nurses were asked to describe how missed nursing care impacted on their nursing practice. RESULTS The results of this research indicate that missed nursing care also happens in IC. The factors that impact on the nurses include intensifying workloads, time allocation and having an experienced workforce. The professional dilemmas indicated by the participants include the key impacts, namely prioritising of patient care, the reporting of missed care in IC and how a team works together in IC, along with the unit’s culture. The impact of personal emotional stress was felt by many of the participants, indicating that they felt feelings of moral stress, and they discussed the responsibilities they felt towards missed nursing care. The results indicated that, for many nurses, missed nursing care had become a norm in practice, with individual nurse’s attitudes being factors in that normalisation. The participants stated that nurses had become idle in their care and had lost the art of prioritising of nursing care.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Nursing

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Grantor

Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT)

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Frechtling, Amy

• New Zealand
• nurses
• intensive care
• missed care
• moral distress
• patient safety
• outcomes
• interviews

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10652/6042

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:null:10652/6042