Percepción del confort en el paciente crítico desde el modelo teórico de Kolcaba

Background

The stay in a critical care unit (CCU) has a serious impact on physical condition causing numerous discomfort factors such as pain or difficulty in communicating. All of these are associated with possible sequelae following discharge from the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) named post-ICU syndrome. The Kolcaba Comfort Theory allows, from a holistic approach, to identify care needs from the patient's perspective using instruments such as the General Comfort Questionnaire (GCQ).

Objectives

To determine the comfort level of patients admitted to the CCU using the GCQ of Kolcaba and to identify the discomfort factors.

Methods

Cross-sectional descriptive observational prospective study. Population: 580 patients admitted to adult CCU of two high complexity hospitals from June 2015 to March 2020 with stay ≥24 h were interviewed. Descriptive analysis, Student's t-test and ANOVA and multivariate analysis were performed using SPSS v26 and STATA v16.

Results

The mean age was 52.62 (16.21), 357 (61.6%) were male and 434 (74.8%) were believers. The type of admission was planned in 322 (55.5%) and the most prevalent reason for admission was surgical 486 (83.8%). The median pain score (NRS) was 3.00 [0-4] and severity score (APACHE II) was 13.26 (5.89), the median length of stay was 4.00 [2-7] days. The mean comfort level was 3.02 (0.31) showing the highest value for the Reanimation Unit 3.02 (0.30) and the lowest fort the Emergency and Trauma Unit 2.95 (0.38). Statistically significant differences were found between the units in the comfort level of patients >65 years of age (P=.029). The Relief comfort type obtained the lowest mean 2.81 (0.33) and the physical context 2.75 (0.41) in the three units. In the multivariate analysis, statistically significant differences were found between the comfort level and the pain level: no pain (P=.000) OR: 4.361; IC: 2.184-8.707, mild pain (P=.000) OR: 4.007; IC: 2.068-7.763, moderate pain (P=.007) OR: 2.803; IC: 1.328-5.913, and the APACHE II score equal to or greater than 10 (P=.000) OR: 0.472; IC: 0.316-0.705.

Conclusions

The comfort level showed high scores in all three units. The physical and environmental contexts and the relief comfort type negatively affected the perception of comfort. The variables that explained comfort were pain and severity of illness. The evaluation of comfort from the patient's perspective through the GCQ could be considered an indicator of quality of nursing interventions.