Investigation of COVID-19 diagnosis and inpatient symptoms, care addiction and nursing diagnoses in intensive care

It has been aimed to determine the symptoms, care dependence and nursing diagnoses of intensive care patients diagnosed with COVID-19. The population of the study consisted of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in the COVID-19 (Coronary) Intensive Care Unit. The study has been conducted with 54 intensive care patients with COVID-19 who were conscious and accepted the study. The data have been collected via "Patient Descriptive Information Form", "Care Dependence Scale" and "Nursing Diagnosis" forms. The data have been evaluated by SPSS 22.0 package program; data have been analyzed using percentage, frequency, Man Whitney U, Kruskall Wallis and Spearman correlation analysis. It has been determined that patients participating in the study; 68.5% of them are male, 42.6% of them are primary school graduates, 61.1% of them are retired, 85.2% of them have equal income and expenses, 70.4% of them are married and their average age is 66.62±12.96. The most common symptoms in COVID-19 patients in need of intensive care were cough, shortness of breath/difficulty breathing, weakness, fatigue, low oxygen saturation, tachypnea, and increased oxygen demand. It has been determined that most of the patients hospitalized in the intensive care unit had at least one chronic disease and the most common chronic diseases were diabetes mellitus, hypertension and chronic lung patients. It has been determined that most of the nurses made nursing diagnoses based on physiological needs for COVID-19 patients hospitalized in the intensive care unit. The activities that COVID-19 patients in need of intensive care are partially dependent on and most addicted to; daily activities, body cleanliness, avoidance of dangers, recreational activities, worship and continence were found to be lower than other activities. It has been concluded that age, marital status, education status, working status, exercise status, perception of health, presence of chronic diseases, referral status of the patient to the clinic, being dependent to mechanical ventilation, and death of the patient affected the care dependency of the patients. Keywords: Intensive Care, COVID-19, Care Dependence, Nursing Diagnoses