Date of Award

Summer 7-17-2022

Document Type

Scholarly Project

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Department

Nursing

First Advisor

Theresa Pape, PhD, MSN, RN, CNOR-E, CNE

Second Advisor

Melody Queenan, DNP, RN, NE-BC

Abstract

Practice Problem: Immobility of patients in the hospital intensive care unit can cause longer stays in the intensive care unit and the hospital. Evidence-based early mobilization of patients helps to reduce length of stay (LOS) and avoid many detrimental sequelae, leading to short and long-term debilitation.

PICOT: The PICOT question that guided this project was: In the adult medical and surgical intensive care units (P), how does implementation of a nurse-driven protocol for early mobility (I), affect the LOS in the intensive care units and the LOS in the hospital (O), as opposed to not using a protocol for early mobility (C) within 8-weeks (T).

Evidence: Evidence supported using the intervention of the Johns Hopkins Inpatient Mobility Short Form © and the Johns Hopkins Highest Level of Mobility tool to reduce the LOS in the intensive care units and the hospital.

Intervention: The nurse-led intervention used the tools to set a daily mobility goal and mobilize the patient in an activity session three times a day.

Outcome: The outcomes showed LOS of post-intervention patients compared to pre-intervention patients. While statistical significance was not found in this short project, clinical significance was shown in a reduction in the mean LOS from 6.22 days to 5.33 days in the hospital.

Conclusion: The project outcomes showed the practice change was not statistically significant. Clinical significance was shown in a reduction of LOS in the hospital. A longer timeframe would be expected to show a statistically significant reduction in LOS.

Comments

Scholarly project submitted to the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Nursing Practice.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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