A VALIDATED COMMUNICATION BOARD REDUCES NURSES COMMUNICATION DIFFICULTIES IN THE ICUS

Introduction:Communication is a vital component in serving the needs of patients in any setting and in particular with patients in intensive care units where patients are often deprived of speech because of intubation. In ICU, mostly verbal communication or face-to-face communication is the preferred mode of communication. Mostly health care providers in the ICU usually do not properly communicate with patients because of the busy environment of the ICU. To provide the holistic care to Mechanically Ventilated patients in ICU the therapeutic communication demands should be met. The overall aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of Validated Communication Board in reducing Communication Difficulties of Nurses in ICUs. Method: This study adopted Quantitative Research Approach with post test only design and conducted in three ICUs of Institute of liver and biliary sciences (ILBS), New Delhi. Purposive sampling technique was used to include nurses into experiment and comparison group. The Validated Communication Board was used by experiment group of Nurses on mechanically ventilated patients during their weaning period.For data collection Demographic Characteristics and Communication Difficulty scale was used in this study and also a Opinionnaire taken from experiment group of nurses related to communication board. Results: A Validated Communication Board is effective in reducing the Communication Difficulty in experiment group Nurses than comparison group Nurses (t = 2.090, p< 0.05). Most of nurses gave positive Opinionnaire related to communication board. It helped nurses to communicate with mechanically ventilated patients with a ease.