Abstract:
Communication is a vital and basic component of nursing. Nurse-patient communication is essential to establish trust, friendly working relationship and to discuss treatment methods. However, patients admitted to the intensive care units and given respiratory treatment, are unable to communicate verbally due to the insertion of artificial airways, tracheostomy or endotracheal tubes. Such patients therefore rely on nonverbal communication methods to express their needs which could be missed out or misinterpreted by health professionals resulting in anxiety, frustration and self-removal of the artificial airways. The aim of this study was to explore Intensive Care Unit Patients’ experiences of how they communicated with Nurses while they had endotracheal tubes in situ. The study employed the exploratory descriptive approach to qualitative research. Purposive sampling technique was employed to recruit participants for the study. Nine (9) participants were recruited for participation in the study. All participants were conscious for at least 24 hours while they still had endotracheal tube in situ. The interviews were conducted between two weeks and two months after participants were discharged home from hospital. Gestures were the major nonverbal method of communication used by the intensive care unit patients. However, most intensive care unit nurses did not understand gestures hence the needs being expressed by the intensive care unit patients were unmet. Negative emotions such as anger, frustration, fear and loneliness were expressed by participants when they realized that they had lost their voices. Some participants attempted self extubation to enable them use their voices. It is recommended that intensive care unit nurses must have orientation for intensive care unit patients after regaining consciousness. Methods of attracting the nurses’ attention must be uniform and must not be different from one nurse to another. Intensive care unit nurses must develop accepted meanings for common gestures which would be used by patients while on admission. Further studies is needed to uncover the reasons of self-extubation from the patients’ perspective
