Abstract:

The prevention of ventilator Assisted Pneumonia (VAP), a hospital-acquired infection, among intensive care patients, is a major clinical challenge. It is a condition that is associated with high rates of morbidity, mortality, length of stay, and hospital costs. Nurses’ compliance with the VAP bundle is a major factor that determines the VAP rates. The aim of this paper is to critically review the available literature and identify the compliance of staff nurses working in ICUs with the VAP bundle, and the reasons of their non-compliance with the the VAP bundle. A comprehensive search for primary research articles was conducted using the Medline and PubMed, Eric, Cochrane, and Google scholar databases, using the keywords ‘ventilator-associated pneumonia’, ‘VAP’, ‘ventilator bundle’ and ‘care bundle’, and combining searches using ‘VAP’ with ‘guideline’, ‘implementation’, ‘adherence’, ‘compliance’ 'Staff Nurses' ‘reasons for non-compliance were entered into a search engine. A number of highly pertinent papers relevant to the aims of the review were identified, only those papers, which satisfied the inclusion criteria, were selected for inclusion in this review. The findings from this review support that nurses in the 6 studies out of 10 had a compliance rate higher than 50% with the VAP bundle and implementation of several teaching strategies can improve the practices and bring down the VAP rates in ICUs. This study expanded knowledge about important aspects of nursing care; nurses' compliance with ventilator-associated pneumonia prevention guidelines and the factors that affect their compliance. This knowledge can be used by a health professional to guide the clinical practice and to improve the quality of care. There is convincing evidence to suggest that specific interventions can be employed to improve adherence to the VAP bundle and thereby reduce the VAP rates.

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