[Health professionals knowledge about the prevention of pneumonia associated to mechanical ventilation at Intensive Care Unit]

Abstract

The Pneumonia Associated to Mechanical Ventilation (PAMV) is the more important and more common infection in critic mechanically ventilated patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICUs). This quantitative research has aimed to assess the knowledge of the health professionals about the prevention of PAMV in two public hospitals of Fortaleza, Ceará State, from June to July, 2006. A questionnaire was applied to 104 professionals, by means of the concept scales of Likert which was used as a parameter and reference to the assessment. It was calculated the average and standard digression and analyzed the knowledge of professionals in relation to the PAMV. It was observed the association between the knowledge about prevention of PAMV and other variables through the chi2 tests from Fisher-Freeman-Halton, fixing the significance level in 5%. The results obtained had suggested that the knowledge of health professionals of the two ICUs about prevention of PAMV was insignificant. We conclude that, in general, despite the professional category, the knowledge about PAMV and risk factors associated to it was only regular lower than expected and, in some cases, the situation was considerably worrying.