Investigation of the attitudes of nurses working in intensive care units towards oral care practice

Oral care, especially for patients in the intensive care unit, is an integral part of patient care. The aim of this study was to develop the "Attitude Scale Towards Oral Care Practice" using the Delphi method in order to determine the attitudes of intensive care nurses towards oral care with an objective assessment tool and to use this scale to determine the attitudes of nurses towards oral care practices. Ethical approval (2021/337) was obtained from the Clinical Research Ethics Committee of Afyonkarahisar Health Sciences University on 30.04.2021 in order to conduct the study. The study sample consisted of 262 nurses working in the intensive care units of a university and a public hospital in the city of Afyonkarahisar. The study data were collected with the Personal Information Form and the Attitude Scale Towards Oral Care Practice (ASTOCP). The SPSS 22.0 Statistical package program was used in the analysis of the data. Distributions of the personal and occupational characteristics of the nurses and each item of the ASTOCP are presented in numbers and percentages. T-tests and analysis of variance were used to compare the cognitive, affective and behavioral sub-dimension scores of the scale, and for the comparison of the personal and occupational characteristics of nurses with their attitudes towards oral care. The validity and reliability analyses of the scale were carried out. Among the 262 participant nurses in the study, 66% were female, 141 were working in the medical intensive care units, and the mean age was 29,176±7,199 years. The mean attitude score towards oral care of nurses was found to be 3.86±0.40. The cognitive sub-dimension mean score of nurses was found to be =4.07, the affective sub-dimension mean score was =3.46 and the behavioral sub-dimension mean score was =4.05, and there was a statistically significant difference between the sub-dimensions (p<0.001). A statistically significant difference was found between the level of nurses' attitudes towards oral care practices and the status of having in-service training and the presence of an oral care protocol in the unit they work in (p<0.05). The scale's Cronbach's Alpha value was found to be 0.837 and it was a reliable instrument. In this study, the overall attitudes of intensive care nurses towards oral care were found to be at a satisfactory level. While the cognitive and behavioral attitudes of the nurses towards oral care were at a satisfactory level, their affective attitudes were at a less satisfactory level. In conclusion, the findings of this study may help improve the quality of oral care practices among intensive care nurses. This, in turn, can improve oral health in our country. Keywords: Delphi technique, intensive care unit, nurse, oral care