Performance obstacles usually experienced by Critical Care nurses

Abstract

Introduction: Nursing care and patient safety may be significantly associated with the work environment of critical care nurses. The key factors affect nurse's outcome have not been clearly identified so that, to provide clear indication to redesign the work environment and improve the nursing care and patients’ safety. Performance obstacles are the main factors to prevent the capability of nurses to perform their task effectively related to their working environment.

Objective: To identify the performance obstacles commonly experienced by critical care nurses in their work environment in tertiary care hospitals Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.

Methodology: A mixed methods and cross-sectional study conducted in tertiary care hospitals Peshawar. Data were collected via convenient sampling through pre structured validated and adopted questionnaire, and univariate analyses was applied using SPSS. The key performance obstacles were reported by Critical care nurses.

Results: Critical care nurses (N=129) from three hospitals in Peshawar participated in the study. The most prominent performance obstacles were; spent much time for teaching family members (76%), delay in receiving medications from pharmacy (64.3%), distraction from family members, and delay in receiving medical orders (51.9% and 51.9%) respectively.

Conclusion: Critical care nurses usually experience various performance obstacles in their daily work environment. Further study on performance obstacles is the time demand on nursing work burden, quality of care and patients’ safety. Apart from these obstacles there is a need for redesigning of the work environment of critical care nurses to overcome these obstacles.