Literature Review on Critical Care Nursing
Introduction
Critical care nursing is a branch of nursing that majorly focuses on providing the utmost care to patients under critical conditions. These patients may either have undergone surgery, have serious injuries, and be in unstable health condition. As a result, it is equally important to understand that critical care nurses are in the environment, such as intensive care units, trauma centers, and emergency departments. (Adam, Osborne & Welch, n.d.). On the other end, critical care nursing should be applied to critically ill patients and need mechanical support and ventilation. This nursing branch is known to be very advanced in knowledge and skills in modern life care and support. This means that they are highly equipped with technological advancements that enable life to be sustained and supported through advanced researching schemes. For instance, critical care nurses are specially trained in advanced cardiac life support and acute and critical care nursing programs. The nurses are supposed to obtain verified certification to practice critical care nursing to specialized patients. Some of the other critical care nursing roles include; performing assessments on critical conditions, advocating for critically ill patients, and offering intensive therapy and interventions to the patients (Adam, Osborne & Welch, n.d.).
Literature Search Methods
This paper mainly employed two methods of searching for literature, narrative, and scoping literature review methods. In the narrative approach, I accessed the necessary materials from https://scholar.google.com/. I used the scoping process to get additional and comprehensive information on the topic.
Literature Review
Critical care nursing should be approached with higher levels of competency-based examination and skill requirements (Kim, Kim & Lim, 2016). Furthermore, there is more stress and pressure in nursing and professional practice. The literature study presented by the scholars was to generally examine the potential of providing the best care in nursing through having qualified professionals to have hands-on critical jobs. This was to draw a boundary line that incompetent nurses cannot provide quality nursing care to ailing patients. Consequently, this would result in fatal results due to factors such as lesser accuracy in drug administration, dosage administration, as well as therapy administration.
Furthermore, these scholars defined critical care nursing as a specialized knowledge based on attitude, values, and general nursing experience. These were the guiding principles to determine the clinical competency of critical care nursing. Besides, the professional skill depended on ethical satisfaction, teamwork, decision making, and collaborative principles (Kim, Kim & Lim, 2016).
Critical care nursing is a particular nursing unit that has advanced knowledge and skills relevant to changing the modern world (Abbasi, Masoudi, Rabiei & Shahbazi, 2019). The definition obtained from the argument is that technological advancement in nursing was critically important in the modern world. It further adds that technology plays a vital role in the improvements and diagnosing of modern-day diseases. The literature focuses on innovative medical technology that has been developed to assist in areas such as mechanical ventilation. Consequently, innovative technology is a new factor that can help a critical care nurse carry out automated activities and make work more comfortable in performing assessments. Also, technology is meant to increase the nurses’ efficiency in terms of availability, quality of service, and activeness. On the other end, they argued that nurses need to reconfigure themselves to the technological world rather than focusing on class earned theoretical knowledge. The essence of technology is to bring out the best practices of a nursing career (Abbasi, Masoudi, Rabiei & Shahbazi, 2019).
Critical care nursing is divided using five main domains based on performance and competency(Abbasi, Masoudi, Rabiei & Shahbazi, 2019). The five fields include; attitude, knowledge base, skill base, nursing experience base, and personality base. This was a further development that they discovered that the nurse’s personality had a significant impact on the service delivery to the patients. For instance, a hardworking and an active nurse would rightly fit into a critical care department. The personality domain works hand in hand with the other four domains to provide a successful nursing career. According to this research, the knowledge and skills obtained work together to achieve a certain level of experience. The attitude comes as a factor of improving all the mentioned domains. From the drawn conclusive idea, critical nursing’s performance and competence requirements depended on multi-dimensional conditions that built from the five discovered areas. Also, the personality domain should be of the high esteem in considerations of work performance.
According to Nesbitt and Goode, critical care nursing is a nursing field that is beneficial to both the critically ill patient and the working nurse. On one end, the patient should be receiving the utmost care, and the nurse should be learning and gaining experience to provide better treatment in the future. For instance, the literature presented gives an illustration of the health factor of a working nurse. It further adds that the nurse should not prioritize the patient’s needs to the extent of depriving him or herself a right to healthy lifestyles. The common problem faced in critical care nursing includes deprivation of sleep by Intensive Care Unit nurses. As a result, the nurse’s health should also be in consideration in his or her working environment. Therefore, they add that critical care nursing perception is a two-way channel of benefiting from the situation. Also, a critical care nurse’s competency is very instrumental in the performance of quality service, which directly depends on the health of the nurse. (Nesbitt & Goode, 2014).
Conclusion
Critical care nursing is a vital nursing role in modern society. This means that all factors are a consideration to achieve an efficient and quality working environment. This field ought to provide an opportunity for the mutual benefits of both the patient and the nurse. Critical care nursing is a unique field of nursing that offers better opportunities for improving the nursing career. For instance, there is further adding of technological knowledge and skill. This equips a practicing nurse with better tools for fighting and treating upcoming complications.
References
Kim, J., Kim, D., & Lim, H. (2016). Senior Nursing Students’ Perceived Competence of Intensive and Critical Care Nursing. The Journal Of Korean Academic Society Of Nursing Education, 22(2), 115-124. doi: 10.5977/jkasne.2016.22.2.115
Abbasi, S., Masoudi, R., Rabiei, L., & Shahbazi, K. (2019). The Effect of Assertiveness Program on Clinical Competence of Intensive Care Units Nurses; A Randomized Clinical Trial. Avicenna Journal Of Nursing And Midwifery Care, 27(5), 293-305. doi: 10.30699/ajnmc.27.5.293
Kang, J., Cho, Y., Jeong, Y., Kim, S., Yun, S., & Shim, M. (2018). Development and Validation of a Measurement to Assess Person-centered Critical Care Nursing. Journal Of Korean Academy Of Nursing, 48(3), 323. doi: 10.4040/jkan.2018.48.3.323
Adam, S., Osborne, S., & Welch, J. Critical care nursing (pp. 537-550).
Nesbitt, L., & Goode, D. (2014). Nurses perceptions of sleep in the intensive care unit environment: A literature review. Intensive and Critical Care Nursing, 30(4), 231-235.