Dorman Brian P, Hill Chris, McGrath Martin, Mansour Anwar, Dobson Diane, Pearse Tracey, Singleton Julie, Al-Omoush Ayman, Barry Margaret, Colongon Arnell Rhee, Perez Maricar, Fitzgerald Deborah, Zabala Maregre
Intensive Care Unit, Royal Free Hospital, Pond Street, Hampstead, London NW3 2QG, UK.
Intensive Crit Care Nurs. 2004 Dec;20(6):320-9. doi: 10.1016/j.iccn.2004.09.004.
The area of bowel care in the intensive care unit (ICU) is often overlooked in the holistic care of the critically ill individual. With the primary concern of optimising patients to preserve life the problem of bowel care has been given less priority. The guidelines included within this service improvement paper offer a simple approach to bowel care management with the use of an algorithm and visual display score to be used in conjunction with the algorithm. This was developed in the intensive care unit of the Royal Free Hospital, London and is presently in use.