Patient perception of humanized care in the intensive care unit. Systematic review

Abstract

Humanized care is a care philosophy that focuses on the patient’s experience, visualizing it as a person and not just as a disease. The objective of the research was to identify the perception of the patient in relation to humanized care in the intensive care unit through a systematic review. A qualitative approach was adopted, based on an integrative literary review of 17 articles from the PubMed/Medline, Virtual Library in Health/ LILACS, SciELO, CINAHL, and institutional repositories databases, to answer the research question. Regarding the results, 16 investigative articles and one review article were identified, where it was recognized that humanized care is characterized by three dimensions that are the qualities of nursing (friendly treatment, visualizing it as a person, respecting its beliefs), openness to patient-nurse communication (looking into the patient’s eyes, explaining the procedures in advance) and the provision of care (delivery of necessary information, respect for privacy). It is concluded that hospitalized patients and those in intensive care favorably perceive the humanized care provided by the nursing staff, which in most cases is frequently promoted.