The critical care area

Abstract

Critical care nurses have been working for a long time to move the organisation of nursing care away from that based on the typical clinical areas of anaesthesia, resuscitation and intensive care. Their role is more appropriately oriented to the 'care of the person in a critical condition' regardless of the place in which he or she is being cared for. The critically ill patient may be a person of any age group who is in an unstable or critical condition: consequently the health/illness concept in this case assumes a natural emphasis on the illness of the cared-for person.Critical care area nurses work in a complex environment: they have to act quickly and often without the information necessary to be able to make decisions for care congruent with need. In fact the intervention is often so rapid that it is independent from the analysis of cause.The nursing interventions in the critical care area are determined on the basis of the model that considers the logic of the obtainable result, which activates the intervention. On the basis of the result, we look for the causes. So the attainable results, and the concepts of the obtained result are fundamental, which can improve in quality and quantity with constant and critical revision of the abilities and performances of nurses. The carrying out of procedures is based on the undertaking of responsibility consequent to actions autonomously carried out and interdependent actions with the doctor. Undertaking of responsibility is, in any case, a dynamic process strictly related to experience and developed ability and therefore to acquired capacity.The aim of this report is to define -in relation to the critical care area -the key words which are the theme of the 11th IPASVI (Italian National Federation of Colleges of Nurses, Health Visitors and Paediatric Nurses) National Congress. The definition of the chosen words is preceded by a short introduction and the word 'discipline' is articulated in its paradigmatic components.All this aims to facilitate the presentation and the analysis of the issue, even though we are aware of the strict interconnection of the chosen words and the related difficulty in separating the subtended concepts.