Clinical Audit of Parenteral Nutrition-related Nursing Care in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences NICU,s

Abstract

Abstract: Introduction: Nutritional care is of vital importance for premature and high-risk infants,. With regard to the necessity of conformity and proximity of the care services to the standards as much as possible, the present study is aimed to clinical audit in Parenteral Nutrition-related Care at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences NICU,s. Materials and methods: The present descriptive study was conducted on 70 nurses working at NICUs of the hospitals affiliated to Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. Data collection was performed using a three-part checklist containing the information on the nurses' performance status in terms of the PN procedure standards before, during, and after providing the care services (pre, peri, and post-PN procedure), so that the total number of observations mounted to 279 cases. Furthermore, in order for data analysis, SPSS-21 software and descriptive statistics were used. Findings: Investigating the nurses' performance status at three stages of before, during, and after the PN, the most conformity rate with standards was evaluated in before parenteral nutrition (71/59%) and then after parenteral nutrition (65/80%,) and during the PN procidure (60/16%) respectively, performance of the nurses was at moderate level. The results also showed that there was a significant relationship between variables such as age, workload and nursing staffing status, gestational age, number of hospitalized infants and crowded, and number of newborns under mechanical ventilation with nurses' function according to standard principles. Discussion and conclusion: : Nurses have direct impacts on patient care as well as itsconsequent outcomes. Neglecting the importance of the PN-related care at NICU,s may lead to irreparable damages to the infants due to their high vulnerability. For diminishing the gap between nursing standards and current neonatal parenteral nutrition nursing care in NICU wards applying clinical guideline in neonatal parenteral nutrition nursing care and clinical supervision by nurse managers for optimizing their implementation are suggested.