ABSTRACT

Material and Method:

Intensive care units are high risk units for serious infections like ventilator associated pneumonia. Preventing ventilator associated pneumonia is one of the most important infection control practice in intensive care units. In this study, it was aimed to investigate the effect of the ventilator associated pneumonia prevention checklist use in decreasing ventilator associated pneumonia rates.

Material and Method:

This study was performed in the intensive care units at Yenimahalle Training and Research Hospital between January 2013 and September 2013. In the first 3 months, the routine infection control measurements were used. At the end of this term a lecture about using the checklist was given to the nurses. At the second 3 months period, the checklist was filled by each patient’s nurse. At the last 3 months period there was no checklist use. The ventilator associated pneumonia rates were registered in all these terms. After and before the intervention term tests about ventilator associated pneumonia prevention with 20 questions were given to the nurses.

Results:

Between January to March 2013, at the first 3 months, ventilator associated pneumonia rate was 38.2%; at the second term, it was 7.4%; at the third term, it was 3.8%. At the front test, the nurses got 84.5 point success rate and at the last test, the rate was 92.6. The success rate differences between these two tests were statistically significant with the Wilcoxon test (z-3.4, p=0.001).

Conclusion:

At the end of this study, despite any changes in the other routine and patient population, it was seen that there were obvious decrease in the ventilator associated pneumonia rates during the intervention term and the term after the intervention. Also the checklist use increased the nurses’ knowledge level about the ventilator associated pneumonia prevention and hand hygiene adherence rate.