Futile therapeutic nursing interventions in adult intensive care: A descriptive study.

Background: Despite the progress made in recent decades on the phenomenon of futility in adult intensive care, recognizing it during clinical care practice remains a complex and sensitive process, during which questions are often raised for which concrete answers are difficult to find. Aims: To anal...

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Publicado en:Nursing Ethics Vol. 32; no. 5; pp. 1458 - 1477
Autores principales: Vieira, João Vítor, Oliveira, Henrique, Deodato, Sérgio, Mendes, Felismina
Formato: questionnaire/scale research tables/charts Journal Article
Publicado: Sage Publications Inc. Aug2025
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Aug2025
      vid: 32
      iid: 5
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      pub: Sage Publications Inc.
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        10.1177/09697330241277988
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        atl: Futile therapeutic nursing interventions in adult intensive care: A descriptive study.
      aug:
        au:
          Vieira, João Vítor
          Oliveira, Henrique
          Deodato, Sérgio
          Mendes, Felismina
        affil: Universidade Católica Portuguesa
      sug:
        subj:
          Intensive Care Units Psychosocial Factors
          Medical Futility Nursing
          Nursing Interventions
          Critical Care Nursing
          Hospitalization
          Critical Care Nurses Psychosocial Factors
          Critically Ill Patients Psychosocial Factors
          Human
          Funding Source
          Portugal
          Male
          Female
          Adult
          Middle Age
          Descriptive Research
          Implementation Science
          Nursing Practice
          Cross Sectional Studies
          Quantitative Studies
          Questionnaires
          Nurse Attitudes Evaluation
          Psychometrics
          Data Analysis, Statistical
          Data Analysis Software
          Simple Random Sample
          Descriptive Statistics
          Confidence Intervals
          Statistical Significance
          Nursing Care Methods
          Summated Rating Scaling
          Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient
          Bivariate Statistics
          Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test
          Adult: 19-44 years
          Middle Aged: 45-64 years
          Male
          Female
      ab: Background: Despite the progress made in recent decades on the phenomenon of futility in adult intensive care, recognizing it during clinical care practice remains a complex and sensitive process, during which questions are often raised for which concrete answers are difficult to find. Aims: To analyze the frequency with which futile nursing interventions are implemented in critically ill patients admitted to adult intensive care in specific situations and how often futile autonomous and interdependent nursing interventions are implemented in the same population, as perceived by adult intensive care nurses. Research design: Cross-sectional, quantitative, and descriptive study, which employed a questionnaire constructed specifically for this research to assess the perception of therapeutic futility in nursing in adult intensive care. Following an evaluation of the psychometric properties, the questionnaire was made available in an electronic format on the EUSurvey platform between August and October 2024. The data was analyzed between November 2023 and March 2024 using the statistical software packages SPSS and R. Participants and research context: A simple random sample of nurses working in level II and level III intensive care units in Portugal. Ethical considerations: Research ethical approvals were obtained, and the participants provided informed consent. Findings/results: Four hundred and fourteen valid questionnaires were obtained. The results allow the identification of thirty-three statistically significant associations, the inference of intervals for the mean and median for the perception of futility of nursing interventions with a 95% confidence interval, and enable the hierarchization of nursing interventions implemented in critically ill patients admitted to adult intensive care units according to the nurses' perception of their futility. Conclusion: There is a balance in nurses' perception of the futility of their interventions in the specific situations analyzed. There is statistically significant evidence that interdependent nursing interventions are, in general, more frequently perceived as futile when compared to autonomous nursing interventions.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        questionnaire/scale
        research
        tables/charts
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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