Survey of perceptions about enteral feeding in personnel of intensive care units of city of Kerman medical university's hospitals in 2013

Malnutrition is a common problem among patients admitted to intensive care units. Nutrition support in intensive care units (ICUs) is accepted as an integral part of patient care; however, feeding remains a low priority compared with other ICU treatments. At present there is little information describing the enteral feeding perception of critical care nurses so this research tried to investigate nurses’ perception about NGT feeding in intensive care unit of city of Kerman medical university’s hospitals in 2013.

This research was a descriptive and cross-sectional study. Participants were 119 nurses whom worked in Kerman medical university’s hospitals and did not do sampling. The instrument for data collection was a researcher – made questioaire and included two parts: first part included 10 questions about demographic characteristics, second part included 14 scenario for survey nurses’ perception about tube. Descriptive statistics and t-test, ANOVA and Pearson correlation were index used for data analysis with software SPSS 18.

In this study, we found that 92.4% of the subjects were women, and 80.7% of them were married and 96.6% of them had a bachelor's degree in nursing. Mean score of perception was 6.68 ±1.99 out of 14. Highest score of nurse's perceptions was related to prevention of tubal obstruction and infection. So although there was a positive perception but it was less than the average, as well as there were significant difference between perception and overtime.

The result of this study showed that score of Nurse's perception was less than half (47.7 % overall score). It is recommended that Evidencebased standards and guidelines should be taught to nurses in intensive care units to gain more awareness and positive perception and feeling more capable, thus taking more principled action during enteral nutrition.