HUMANIZATION OF NURSING CARE IN THE INTENSIVE CARE UNIT: INTEGRATIVE REVIEW

Abstract

Introduction: The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is a sector that offers highly complex care, aiming to maintain life stability and promote health rehabilitation. It is a technological environment that involves a variety of processes and procedures, arousing different emotions in patients and the interdisciplinary team. Humanizing in the health area is related to a series of behaviors, conducts, quality of care and organization. In this context, nursing work is challenging due to care and management activities, which can result in work overload and favor an approach more focused on care techniques. Objective: to discuss the humanization of nursing care, focusing on ICU practices. Methodology: this work will be an integrative review of the literature, which will be guided by the question: “what care do nursing professionals provide to offer humanized care to patients hospitalized in intensive care units?”. The bibliographic search will be carried out using the Virtual Health Library (VHL) and the following databases: Latin American and Caribbean Literature in Health Sciences (LILACS), Medical Literature Analyses and Retrieval System On-line (MEDLINE) and Nursing Database (BDENF). The search keywords will be the DeCS “Nursing care” “Humanization” “Intensive Care Unit”, combined with the Boolean operator AND. The inclusion criteria for selecting studies will consist of the availability of the full text in Portuguese, English and Spanish, published in the last five years and online access. Theses, monographs and papers that do not fit the proposed objectives will be excluded. After the search has been identified and executed, the abstracts of the selected articles will be analyzed and read. Then, the data will be organized into tables and charts for discussion. Results and discussion: The results show the importance of the reception offered by the intensive care team to the patient. Elements such as the participation of family members in the therapeutic process, respect for the spirituality and faith of the patient and their family members, in addition to effective communication – whether among the team, between health professionals and patients, or between professionals and family members – are fundamental. In the intensive care unit environment, the humanization of nursing care contributes significantly to improving the quality of patient treatment. Conclusion: It is concluded that the humanization of nursing care in the ICU represents a constant search for practices that place the patient at the center of care, valuing their clinical condition and their humanity.