IMPORTANCE OF THE NURSE'S APPROACH TO POLYTRAUMATED PATIENTS IN THE INTENSIVE CARE UNIT

Abstract

A polytraumatized patient is a patient who has suffered multiple traumas to different parts of the body, often caused by a car accident or a fall from a height. When a polytrauma patient arrives at an intensive care unit (ICU), the main goals of treatment are to stabilize vital functions, prevent progression of the trauma, and treat all injuries that are potentially lethal or disabling. Therefore, the referring work aims to describe the nurse's approach to polytraumatized patients in the intensive care unit. This is an integrative review of the literature, with the character of a descriptive study and a qualitative approach, in which searches were carried out in the Virtual Health Library system of the Ministry of Health, using the following descriptors: nursing, Multiple Trauma and Intensive Care Units . Initially, 289 results were found without filters, and later the application was reduced to 42 studies, and of these, their titles resulting from the databases were read, leaving only 10 articles for the sample in the final qualitative synthesis. Through literary analysis, he verified. It is clear that multiple trauma is characterized by the presence of multiple injuries in different body systems, which makes it a critical and potentially fatal condition. Therefore, nursing care for polytraumatized patients is essentially important, considering that this patient requires special and complex attention. The nurse must accompany the patient from admission to hospital discharge, ensuring the stabilization of vital functions and controlling pain and complications resulting from trauma. This integrative review made it possible to analyze through the scientific literature that some emerging studies suggest that the nursing team in the ICU plays a fundamental role in providing continuous care to maintain the patient's hemodynamic stability, pain control and maintenance of the body's homeostasis.