An Observational Study on ICU Nurses’ Practices of Patient Body Hygiene Care

Background.

Nursing care for patient hygiene in intensive units. Intensive care units (ICU) look after critical patients. Critical and immobile patients depend on the nurse for their basic needs.

 Healthcare-associated infections can be prevented and skin integrity is better maintained. It promotes patient comfort. In critical care settings, due to workload pressure, lack of infrastructure, and providing life-saving interventions, hygiene care is most of the time neglected. In Iraq, little research was conducted on the hygiene practices among ICU nurses. Hence, this study is needed to enable improvement.

Objectives.

The purpose of this research is to find out the practices of ICU nurses about the maintenance of body hygiene and also find the strength and weaknesses. This research further aims to find out the influence of demographic and employment characteristics on the practices of body hygiene.

Methodology.

A study identified by descriptive cross-sectional was carried out at Hilla Teaching Hospital ICU from 9 February 2023 to 26 June 2024. A convenience sample of 125 nurses participated. We collected the data through a structured questionnaire developed after reviewing relevant literature.

• Part 1 collects socio-demographic and occupational information like age, gender, education, etc.
• Part II comprises of practices regarding other aspects of hygiene care.

The instrument would be reliable with Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.84. The data was gathered from March 17 to May 15, 2024, and the data were analyzed using the SPSS version 26 application. Results.

Most of the nurses were aged 20–30 years (83.6%), female (69.1%), and college (66.4%). The majority of the subjects had experience of 1–10 years, that is 64.6%. Furthermore, most (52.7%) had less than 5 years experience in ICU itself.

In general, nurses’ practice was assessed to be a fair level on all domains.

• Best result was hand hygiene before care (Mean=2.48, good practice).
• The worst performance is shown by activity 6.1 (using and disposing of PPE), 6.2 (drying skin) and 6.5 hair/nail care activities (mean ≤ 1.6, poor practice).

Fair practice (1.6–2.39) was indicated for general mean.

The results showed deficiencies related to environmental preparation, catheter handling and infection control which had only moderate adherence to assessment and oral hygiene.

Conclusion.

The overall performance of ICU nurses in body hygiene was fair, however, there were deficiencies observed in PPE, environmental readiness, and detailed procedure. Most participants had a high education level, but not everyone applied evidence-based hygiene care. The gaps may be due to factors such as minimal training, shortage of staff and want of institutional support.