Abstract
In the present manuscript(Part 2), we elucidated the uniqueness of ICU nursing practice in hospitals specializing in heart surgery from the perspective of its relationship to advanced medical equipment, with a focus on responses to the process of weaning off mechanical ventilation.
As with the previous study, this study followed a qualitative approach using participant observation and interviews.
The results indicated that ICU nursing practice involved an orderly approach for promoting independent respiratory function. Specifically, nurses with expertise in ICU focused on emotional changes during endotracheal intubation, and attempted to encourage patients to breathe independently while recognizing and responding to pain, which tended to increase. This was part of the "adjustments for the promotion of functional independence" described in the previous manuscript. Nurses with expertise in ICU prepared in advance for measures against possible situations that may follow, in order to realize nursing practice for promoting independent respiratory function as described above. Nurses developed this stance by predicting possible situations that may follow in relation to events at hand based on data from advanced medical equipment.
Approaches for applying data from advanced medical equipment in nursing practice are difficult to share in ICU.
The present findings, which specifically demonstrated "when and where" events occur in ICU nursing practice, were thought to lead to sharing of the focus and intentions of ICU nurses and to enable nurses to recognize aspects of nursing in their actions.
