Intelligence Care: A Nursing Care Strategy in Respiratory Intensive Care Unit

Background: Working in respiratory intensive care unit (RICU) is multidimensional that requires nurses with special attributes to involve with the accountability of the critically ill patients. Objectives: The aim of this study was to explore the appropriate nursing care strategy in the RICU in order to unify and coordinate the nursing care in special atmosphere of the RICU. Materials and Methods: This conventional content analysis study was conducted on 23 health care providers working in the RICU of Sina and Shariati hospitals affiliated to Tehran university of medical sciences and the RICU of Baqiyatallah university of medical sciences from August 2012 to the end of July 2013. In addition to in-depth semistructured interviews, uninterrupted observations, field notes, logs, patient’s reports and documents were used. Information saturation was determined as an interview termination criterion. Results: Intelligence care emerged as a main theme, has a broad spectrum of categories and subcategories with bridges and barriers, including equality of bridges and barriers (contingency care, forced oriented task); bridges are more than barriers (human-center care, innovative care, cultural care, participatory care, feedback of nursing services, therapeutic-professional communication, specialized and independent care, and independent nurse practice), and barriers are higher than bridges (personalized care, neglecting to provide proper care, ineffectiveness of supportive caring wards, futility care, nurse burnout, and nonethical-nonprofessional communications). Conclusions: Intelligence care is a comprehensive strategy that in addition to recognizing barriers and bridges of nursing care, with predisposing and precipitating forces it can convert barriers to bridges.