Nursing teams facing patients' clinical deterioration in wards: an integrative review

Abstract

Objective: To explore, in scientific publications, the Nursing assistance provided to critically-ill or potentially serious adult patients hospitalized in wards. Method: An integrative review carried out in November 2022 in the Web of Science, PubMed, Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde, Scopus and EMBASE databases, using the following string: “nursing AND critical care AND patients’ rooms OR ward OR infirmary AND adult OR middle aged OR aged OR aged, 80 and over”. Results: Of the 4,596 studies found, 19 original articles published between 2017 and 2022 were included. Their contents were grouped into two categories: “Barriers for the care to be provided to acute patients in wards” and “Opportunities to improve care quality”. Conclusion: From this review it was possible to extract possible barriers and potentialities for advancing care for critically-ill patients in wards, which can serve as a starting point for health teams to rethink the practice and create strategies aimed at solving barriers and at implementing care improvements.