Informal Nutrition Study

This study aimed to determine the compliance of enteral nutritional care in patients of intensive care units with existing standards in these units in Bojnourd Hospitals. As one of the groups involved in providing patient care, intensive care nurses are engaged in assessment and participation in the implementation of evidence-based care programs, as well as monitoring and evaluating the patient's response to the care provided, including nutrition in the intensive care unit, which is no exception to this rule as an important nursing care [14].

The results of this study indicate that the care provided for enteral nutrition is far from the current standards. In an auditing study conducted by Najafi Anari et al. (2013) to evaluate the compliance

Failure of timely visit to a physician to start patient's nutrition and monitor the problems and complications of nutrition are examples that can lead to problems and non-observation of the adequate standard of patient feeding care by the nurse. The most important barriers to enteral nutrition by intensive care nurses in the study of Cahill et al. (2012) were as follows: higher importance of nursing care than nutrition, lack of adequate equipment, lack of adequate gavage solution, difficulty in access to small intestine catheter in patients who do not tolerate feeding, lack of expert or nutritionist in the department (especially on holidays), physician’s delay in starting a patient's nutrition and prescribing gastrointestinal drugs, and the nutritionist's delay in visiting the patient

The results of the present study also show that nearly half of the patients with intensive care are not fed to the level specified in the index card (i.e. less than the prescribed value). Twelve out of 77 patients studied in Yip et al. (2014) research were fed less than their prescribed level during their admission period in ICU [20], and the majority of patients in the study of Raid (2006) received 80% of their estimated calories and energy [21]. The majority of patients studied by Umayara et al. (2010) also received 50% of the estimated calorie intake [22]. This nutritional deficiency can be correlated with a shortage of nursing staff, shortage of food available for gavage, lack of proper equipment, lack of priority in patient nutrition, and lack of specific guidelines for determining patient’s intolerance