Volume 24, Issue 104, July - August, 2020

Factors related to attitudes and beliefs toward visiting in intensive care unit from the view points of nurses working in ICU

Alireza Faghani¹, Ali Akbar Abdollahi², Somayeh Meshkani³, Zahra Sabzi^4♦

¹Graduate of BSC in critical care nursing, nursing research center of Golestan, University of Medical Sciences, Gorgan, Iran
²Instructor, Nursing Department, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Gorgan, Iran
³Graduate of BSC in critical care nursing, Nursing Research Center, Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Gorgan, Iran
⁴Assistant Professor, Nursing Research Center, Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Gorgan, Iran

^♦Corresponding author
Assistant Professor, Nursing Research Center, Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Gorgan, Iran Email: zsgorgan@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT

Introduction and aim: Hospitalization in the intensive care unit (ICU) creates acute physical and psychological stress in patients. It is possible to meet the emotional and psychological needs of patients with the participation of families, which is considered one of the important duties of medical staff. Therefore, visiting patient in the intensive care unit is a challenging issue due to severe limitations that are in placed in this regard. No specific guidelines or instructions have been developed for this issue so far. Due to the nature of their work, nurses play an important role in providing a suitable ground for policy change in the field of patient visit in ICUs. Therefore, this study was conducted with the aim of determining the factors related to belief and attitude towards patient visit in the intensive care unit from the perspective of ICU nurses working in teaching hospitals of Golestan University of Medical Sciences in 2019. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study with a descriptive-analytical approach that was conducted as a census. In total, 203 nurses working in ICUs of teaching hospitals affiliated to Golestan University of Medical Sciences, who had the inclusion criteria participated in this study. Data collection tools included a valid and reliable questionnaire of the belief and attitude of ICU nurses towards patient visit in intensive care unit (BAVIQ), and demographic information form. Descriptive statistics, independent t-test, Pearson correlation coefficient, and ANOVA were used in the statistical software of SPSS-16 to analyze the data at the significant level of 0.05. Results: Of the 203 ICU nurses, 52 were males and 151 were females. The mean age of nurses was 31 years and the mean total score of nurses' beliefs was 34.97 ± 8.25. The mean score of belief with negative direction was 30.03 ± 7.10 and the mean score of belief with positive direction was 13.00 ± 4.26. The mean overall attitude score was 20.78 ± 7.36. The nurses' belief had a statistically significant relationship (P = 0.001) with the variable of work experience in the ICU. Nurses' attitudes also had a statistically significant relationship with their employment status (P = 0.01), but did not have a statistically significant relationship with other variables. Conclusion: The results of present study showed that most nurses had a negative belief about free visit policy. This is a major obstacle to changing the visit policy in order to meet the emotional and psychological needs of patients and their families.

Keywords: Belief, Attitude, Visit, Nurses, Intensive Care Unit

Medical Science, 2020, 24(104), 2648-2654

PDF