Assessment of Analgesia, Sedation, Physical Restraints and Delirium in Spanish Intensive Care Units

An observational, descriptive, cross-sectional, prospective and multicenter study was conducted to know the usual practice (audit) in critical care units and about the assessment of pain, sedation, delirium and the use of mechanical restraints.

At the same time, the level of pain, sedation / agitation and presence of delirium were evaluated in all adult patients who were admitted to the participating units with a minimum stay of 24 hours in the unit.

Process In order to obtain the largest representation of Spanish Intensive Care Units, a network of research nurses was created with coordinators in each autonomous community. The function of the coordinators was to contact and recruit units of adult critical patients within their community. Each coordinator contacted the centers (public and private), creating a network of collaborating nurses from those units who expressed their willingness to participate and who obtained the authorization of their Research Ethics Committee. Each unit was asked to contact a collaborating nurse for the project.

Once the national network of collaborating nurses was created, through the community coordinators, each password was given to each nurse to access the platform created for data entry. The platform offered access to all the documents (methodology, timeline, recommended assessment tools, navigation tutorial for the platform).

Data collection The tool used was an ad hoc survey with online access which consisted of 2 blocks. The first block asked about the characteristics of the units, the nurse-patient ratio, the existence of protocols and the usual practice for the control of pain, sedation / agitation, delirium and the use of mechanical restraints in the unit.

In the second block, questions were asked about aspects of direct assistance to patients, and direct evaluation of pain level, sedation / agitation of patients as well as the presence of delirium and mechanical containment.

Evaluation of patients included The data collection was done by direct observation and in the same period in all participating units. These data were entered into the platform through a "Patient Code", created automatically by the system.

To assess pain in patients, the investigators used two scales, for patients with the ability to communicate, the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) scale was recommended and for patients without the ability to communicate the Scale of Behavioral Indicators of Pain (ESCID). The evaluation of the level of sedation / agitation was recommended to be carried out with the Richmond Agitation Sedation Scale (RASS) and delirium with the Confusion Assessment Method for the Intensive Care Unit (CAM-ICU).

The data on the use of tools to assess pain, sedation / agitation and delirium, as well as the recording of the use of mechanical restraints, were collected retrospectively on the nursing records of the patients evaluated, the day after their assessment.

Statistic analysis First, a descriptive analysis was made of the general characteristics of the participating units and the study population, presenting the data with means and standard deviations (SD) or medians and interquartile ranges (RIC), as appropriate. Group comparison was performed with the Student t test for quantitative variables or nonparametric tests, as appropriate, and Fischer's test or chi-square for qualitative variables. The data was analyzed with the statistical package IBM SPSS Statistics 21.0 for Windows

Inclusion criteria

• All adult patients who were admitted to the participating units at the time of the audit and had a minimum stay of 24 hours in the unit.

Exclusion criteria

• no criteria