PERSPECTIVE OF NURSES REGARDING FACTORS AFFECTING QUALITY OF NURSING CARE IN INTENSIVE CARE UNITS: A QUALITATIVE STUDY

Abstract

Introduction: Nurses have a significant role in ensuring patient safety by preventing adverse events and medical errors. Many factors like nurse-to-patient ratio, long working hours, miscommunication, environmental distractions, and inappropriate skill mix have been reported to be linked to preventable adverse events and medical errors. Wrong medication, inappropriate dosage, wrong route of administration, lack of drug labelling, errors of omission and deviation from policies and procedures are common errors associated with low quality nursing care. This study was conducted to explore perspective of nurses regarding factors affecting quality of nursing care in intensive care units in public sector tertiary care hospitals of Peshawar.

Material & Methods: Qualitative case study design was used for conducting this study. Six focus group discussions were conducted in three public sector tertiary care hospitals of Peshawar for data collection. Participants were recruited through purposive sampling technique. Thematic analysis approach was used for data analysis.

Results: Five main themes of factors influencing quality of nursing care were identified. These themes included, nurses related factors, patients and relatives related factors, working environment related factors, administration related factors and ICU settings and supplies related factors.

Conclusion: This study revealed that many factors related to nurses, patients, relatives of the patients, administration, working environment, and ICU setting and supplies were influencing quality of nursing care in intensive care units.