effect of clinical audit process on level of endotracheal suctioning skill in nurses and anesthesia technicians working in intensive care units

background & aim: with the implementation of incorrectly airway suctioning, many complications and risks can be followed. therefore, health care providers can expedite recovery of patients by increasing in quality of suction. this study was conducted to evaluate the effect of clinical audit process on the level of endotracheal tube suctioning skill in nurses and anesthesia technicians working in intensive care units (icus) of aja hospitals in tehran, iran.
methods & materials: in this semi-experimental study, 135 nurses and anesthesia technicians working in icus in aja hospitals in tehran, iran recruited by census method and were randomly allocated into two groups of intervention and control, in 2013-2014. the intervention was conducted via implementation of the five-stage clinical audit in the intervention group. for detection of endotracheal tube suctioning skill in subjects, pre- and post-intervention, the checklist was used. then, data were analyzed using the spss version 21.
results: in pre-intervention phase, independent t-test not showed significant differences in the mean scores of the subjects’ clinical endotracheal suction skill in two groups (p = 0.7300) but in postintervention phase, two groups were different (p = 0.0001). paired t-test showed that the total score of nursing skill in endotracheal suction of the subjects in intervention group after the intervention significantly increased (102.38 ± 7.24 to 121.25 ± 2.10, p = 0.0001).
conclusion: the results of this study suggested a positive impact of clinical audit process on nurses and anesthesia technicians’ endotracheal suction skill. therefore, it seems that the implementation of this process can promote level of nursing care.