{"title":"Intensive Care Unit Nurses' Views on Recognizing and Caring for Inpatients' Anxiety Levels: A Qualitative Descriptive Study.","authors":"Yüksel Can Öz, Tuba Yilmaz Bulut, Esin Tekin","doi":"10.3390/healthcare14193301","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p><b>Background/Objectives</b>: Anxiety in intensive care patients is a significant concern, yet limited evidence exists regarding nurses' perspectives on its assessment and management. This study aimed to explore intensive care nurses' views and experiences regarding the recognition, assessment, and management of anxiety among hospitalized intensive care patients. <b>Methods</b>: A qualitative descriptive design was employed, and the study sample consisted of 21 nurses selected from 50 nurses working in the intensive care unit of the hospital. The data were collected through in-depth interviews conducted in person between July and September 2021. The data were analyzed manually using an inductive thematic analysis approach. <b>Results</b>: A thorough analysis of the interviews yielded four overarching themes: the nurses' initial assessment priorities, the nurses' recognition of and responses to patient anxiety, approaches to reducing anxiety, and factors affecting anxiety assessment. Four main themes and ten sub-themes emerged from the interviews. The theme \"Nurses' Initial Assessment Priorities\" comprised the sub-themes \"Prioritizing the Emergency\" and \"Getting to Know the Patient.\" The theme \"Nurses' Recognition of and Responses to Patient Anxiety\" included \"Under-recognition of Anxiety,\" \"Compliance with Care and Treatment,\" and \"Recognizing Psychological Needs.\" The theme \"Approaches to Reducing Anxiety\" comprised \"Providing Information\" and \"Therapeutic Communication and Emotional Support.\" Finally, the theme \"Factors Affecting Anxiety Assessment\" included \"Workload,\" \"Organizational and Work-Related Factors,\" and \"Training Needs.\" <b>Conclusions</b>: It is recommended that in-service training programmes covering psychosocial care, anxiety assessment and management be organised for intensive care nurses and that more emphasis be placed on psychosocial care and patient anxiety in intensive care in nursing undergraduate and graduate education programmes.</p>","PeriodicalId":12977,"journal":{"name":"Healthcare","volume":"14 19","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4000,"publicationDate":"2026-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13665097/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Healthcare","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare14193301","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background/Objectives: Anxiety in intensive care patients is a significant concern, yet limited evidence exists regarding nurses' perspectives on its assessment and management. This study aimed to explore intensive care nurses' views and experiences regarding the recognition, assessment, and management of anxiety among hospitalized intensive care patients. Methods: A qualitative descriptive design was employed, and the study sample consisted of 21 nurses selected from 50 nurses working in the intensive care unit of the hospital. The data were collected through in-depth interviews conducted in person between July and September 2021. The data were analyzed manually using an inductive thematic analysis approach. Results: A thorough analysis of the interviews yielded four overarching themes: the nurses' initial assessment priorities, the nurses' recognition of and responses to patient anxiety, approaches to reducing anxiety, and factors affecting anxiety assessment. Four main themes and ten sub-themes emerged from the interviews. The theme "Nurses' Initial Assessment Priorities" comprised the sub-themes "Prioritizing the Emergency" and "Getting to Know the Patient." The theme "Nurses' Recognition of and Responses to Patient Anxiety" included "Under-recognition of Anxiety," "Compliance with Care and Treatment," and "Recognizing Psychological Needs." The theme "Approaches to Reducing Anxiety" comprised "Providing Information" and "Therapeutic Communication and Emotional Support." Finally, the theme "Factors Affecting Anxiety Assessment" included "Workload," "Organizational and Work-Related Factors," and "Training Needs." Conclusions: It is recommended that in-service training programmes covering psychosocial care, anxiety assessment and management be organised for intensive care nurses and that more emphasis be placed on psychosocial care and patient anxiety in intensive care in nursing undergraduate and graduate education programmes.
期刊介绍：
Healthcare (ISSN 2227-9032) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal (free for readers), which publishes original theoretical and empirical work in the interdisciplinary area of all aspects of medicine and health care research. Healthcare publishes Original Research Articles, Reviews, Case Reports, Research Notes and Short Communications. We encourage researchers to publish their experimental and theoretical results in as much detail as possible. For theoretical papers, full details of proofs must be provided so that the results can be checked; for experimental papers, full experimental details must be provided so that the results can be reproduced. Additionally, electronic files or software regarding the full details of the calculations, experimental procedure, etc., can be deposited along with the publication as “Supplementary Material”.
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