| Summary: | Abstract
Background & Aim: Children under mechanical ventilation are at risk of developing pneumonia, due to the lack of cough reflex, swallowing and immobility. Many of the pneumonia preventing strategies related to ventilation are direct responsibilities of clinical nurses. The aim of the study was to evaluate the performance of nurses in the field of oral care in the children under mechanical ventilation.
Method & Materials: The research was a cross-sectional- descriptive study and 100 nurses from pediatric intensive care unit were selected by using convenience sampling, during 2015. The instruments were including the demographic characteristics form and three types of performance checklist related to oral care guideline in the children under mechanical ventilation. The performance of each nurse was observed and examined by one of the three check lists for three times in different shifts. Then the performance of nurses was classified at three levels including less than 50%, between 50% - 74.9% and also 75% and above. Statistical analysis was performed using descriptive statistics.
Results: More than half of nurses (67%) obtained below 50% of the mean performance score, 24% of them received 50% -74.9% of the mean and only 9% of them reached to 75% mean performance score. The most items related to wearing gloves (0.98) and the lowest was brushing (0%).
Conclusion: The nurse’s performance in oral care was poor, hence it is necessary to design education course for nurses, provide proper facilities of evidence-based protocols in improvement of the quality of clinical care and conduct research about the causes of poor performance in nurses.
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