Nurse's Role in Preventing Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia in Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

Intensive care units are the clinics in which patients requiring intensive care due to serious dysfunctions of one or more organ and organ systems are aimed to be improved, which have the privilege in terms of patient care and setting, equipped with high-tech devices, in which monitoring of 24-hour vital signs and the patient treatment are performed. The most commonly used device in these units is mechanical ventilators. Mechanical ventilation is a life support system designed to support or to fulfill the functions of normal lung. Although mechanical ventilation implemented in pediatric intensive care units in recent years is a life saving attempt, it brings many complications. The main complications are barotrauma, oxy-trauma, volutrauma, tracheal stenosis and infections. Ventilator-associated pneumonia which is one of the major complications of mechanical ventilation is defined as the infection occurred in the lower respiratory tract of children and many risk factors are known to play role in its development. Many of these risk factors are obtained from adult studies and some of them were suggested to be appropriate to be used in children. Nurses who mostly interact with patients in pediatric intensive care unit and who perform intervention should be well-informed about the risk factors of ventilator-associated pneumonia and to take measures for its prevention.