Impacto de uma tecnologia de informação e comunicação na prevenção e tratamento de úlceras por pressão em pacientes críticos

Abstract

Educational interventions impact assessment appears to identify the effectiveness of programs, software, courses and trainings that involve professionals and individuals who present capacity needs. The Pressure Ulcer Online Course used in this thesis is an information and communication technology (ICT) developed to qualify nursing professionals to prevent and treat Pressure Ulcer (PU) in patients in all care situations. The PU, besides being a worldwide health problem, assembles studies that search ways of minimizing this problem, and it is a quality nursing assistance indicator adopted by health institutions. The objective of this thesis was to evaluate the impact of an educational intervention using an information and communication technology on prevention and treatment of pressure ulcer at an Intensive Care Unit of a Teaching Hospital in Fortaleza/CE. This is a quasi-experimental study with a before and after approach carried out from September 2011 to June 2012. 94 patients (47 patients before and 47 patients after) and 09 nurses from the ICU have participated in the research. The study has been divided into three phases: pre-intervention, intervention, and post-intervention. In order to collect data, we used questionnaires for patients’ social and clinic variables; data regarding nursing assistance for PU prevention and treatment; Braden scale for assessing pressure ulcer risk; questionnaire for nurses’ social variables; and the Pieper’s and Mott’s (1995) questionnaires to evaluate the nurses’ knowledge of PU. Data was organized using Microsoft Excel and analyzed using the Statistic Software SAS. Statistical analyses were carried out using the Student’s t-test, Fisher’s Exact test, and Yates’ corrected Chi-square test, Wilcoxon T test, and Wicoxon-Mann-Whitney U test. The ethical committee of the institution has approved this research under protocol number 098.09.11. Results have pointed out similarity between the pre and post-intervention groups regarding social characteristics and clinical factors (p˂0.05) that have been analyzed, excepting the readmission item, which was present only in the first phase. Risk assessment, skin description and prevention measures description have shown better percentage in the post-intervention group, but there was no statistically significant difference (p=0.839; p=0.865; p=0.723, respectively). Most patients from the pre-intervention group (53.19%) have presented PU; this superiority has also happen regarding PU presence at the patient’s admission to hospital with significant difference related to the post-intervention group. PU prevalence at the IUC has decreased from 36.23% to 27.36% and incidence has reduced from 31.91% to 19.14 after the educational intervention. Most patients from the pre-intervention group have presented high risk for developing PU (57.44%) and the post-intervention group has present moderate risk (51.06%). Most of the nine nurses have already taken a course on PU (55.56%) and an online course (55.56%). Number of correct answers about prevention was higher in the post-intervention group, which showed a percentage of 81.93% correct answers. This group was also the one presenting the greatest percentage in questions about PU staging (93.20%). Difference on the number of correct answers and points between the groups have presented significant difference (p<0.05). We concluded that the educational intervention has impacted on the decrease of lesions prevalence and incidence at the IUC and on the nurses knowledge acquisition, mainly, regarding lesions staging.