Interventional Patient Hygiene Model: New Insights in Critical Care Nursing, Starting from the Basics of Care

Abstract

The evidence-based practice, together with other tools of clinical governance as clinical risk management and health technology assessment, has shifted critical care medicine toward a more proactive patient-centered approach. Nursing care is strongly involved in the prevention of hospital-acquired conditions and hospital-acquired infections. The Interventional Patient Hygiene Model considers a systematic approach to implement evidence-based basic nursing intervention on patients’ hygiene (bioburden reduction) and mobility strategies to proactively prevent hospital-acquired infections and skin injuries. The components of this model were originally bed bathing management, oral care, wound dressing, mobilization, incontinence management, and urinary catheter’s care. Later, hand hygiene and skin antisepsis have been included in the model. The implementation of such a nursing model based on the basics of care needs a deep reflection about the nursing priorities in the critical care setting. Given that this model turns around the central concepts of patients’ safety and outcomes, it could be hypothesized that bowel constipation management, and sleep and rest promotion, could be gathered in the model.