The effectiveness of an evidence-based nursing care program to reduce ventilator-associated pneumonia in a Korean ICU.

OBJECTIVES

This study has analysed VAP prevention strategies and concentrating on approaches proven to have been effective by previous studies, has developed a general and systematic intervention for preventing VAP.

METHOD

The VAP prevention program was composed of short-term interventions and long-term interventions. Using a time series design to verify the program's effectiveness, just before, just after, and 3 months after intervention, 27 convenient selected medical ICU nurses were surveyed for their awareness of VAP prevention and self-evaluation of VAP prevention performance as a subjective measure, and their VAP prevention performance was observed as an objective measure. The VAP incidence amongst ICU patients was measured during the 3 months before (n=80) and after (n=75) intervention.

RESULTS

That the program would raise nurses' VAP prevention awareness (p=.008) and would increase the nurses' subjective (p=.003) and objective (p≤.001) VAP prevention performance evaluations was supported. That incidences of VAP would decrease from a pre-intervention VAP rate of 17.382 (number of occurances/1000 ventilator days) to a post-intervention rate of 11.044, was not statistically significant (p=.074).

CONCLUSION

An intervention VAP prevention program promoted ICU nurses' VAP prevention awareness and performance and could therefore help decrease the VAP rate.