TO CONDUCT A MULTI CENTRE SURVEY ON THE AWARENESS OF VENTILATORS AND PULSE OXI METER DISPLAYERS AMONG PHYSIOTHERAPIST AND OTHER INTENSIVE CARE STAFF POSTED IN INTENSIVE CARE UNITS OF VARIOUS HOSPITALS IN NORTH EASTERN STATES OF INDIA.

Abstract

Background: ICU is a specially staffed and fully equipped unit of the hospital where patient requiring intensive care is kept. In order to meet the demand of seriously ill patients a numbers of sophisticated equipments and gadgets are used. Studies have shown that there is a need for knowledge about the operating system of these machines used in ICU to execute the treatment protocols by the ICU staff. Various therapeutic procedures are done depending on the readings of the machines and monitoring of the values is required before and after the treatment sessions. So it becomes mandatory for the ICU staff to have good command over the parameters of the equipment. The objective of the study is therefore to find out the awareness of two important machines namely the Mechanical ventilator and Pulse oximeter among the ICU staff including the physiotherapist in north eastern states of India.
Methods: An observational cross section study has been done with 200 subjects who is working in ICU for more than 6 months.
Result: The data of 200 subjects were analyzed and the scores of the questionnaire was estimated using Karl Pearson Correlation Coefficient which has shown that there is a significant (p value =0.00) awareness of pulse oximeter displayers and ventilators among physiotherapist and other ICU staff in the north eastern states of India.
Conclusion: Based on the results, it is concluded that 72.5% of the subjects were well aware and 27.5% of the subjects were least aware about the ventilators and pulse oximeter, hence it can be considered that there is an acceptable knowledge among the ICU staff including physiotherapist in north eastern states of India about the ventilator and pulse oximeter displayers.