Best practice nursing care for ICU patients with incontinence-associated dermatitis and skin complications resulting from faecal incontinence and diarrhoea.

AIMS: Incontinence-associated dermatitis (IAD), resulting from diarrhoea and/or faecal incontinence, is a common problem in intensive care, occurring in 7-50% of the patients, with an estimated 10 million dollars spent annually on continence skin care. This project aimed to evaluate and improve the staff knowledge on IAD and also improve practice in the identification, prevention and treatment of IAD in the ICU.

METHODS: A pre/post-audit framework was used to implement the best practice recommendations between August 2013 and March 2014. Nursing staff were surveyed and a chart review was conducted to audit baselines of knowledge and nursing practice regarding IAD. Education and product standardization were used to implement the best practice recommendations and a post-audit was conducted to evaluate changes in knowledge and practice.

RESULTS: Thirty-one (pre-implementation) and 27 (post-implementation) nurses were surveyed to evaluate knowledge on IAD identification, care and documentation practices. No IAD policy or IAD-specific skin assessment tool for use existed in the ICU. After implementation, there was a 40% increase in the ability of the staff to distinguish between IAD and pressure injuries, an increase from 87% to 100% in the use of skin-protectant and an improvement from 25 to 66% in the correct application of skin-protectants. An encouraging 70% of the nurses were using a single standard skin-protectant after implementation as opposed to audit 1, where 100% of the nurses were using multiple products before implementation. There was a 16% increase in the staff surveyed post-audit who said they reported on the perineal skin in patients with IAD. However, IAD documentation in both audit 1 and audit 2, as evidenced by chart review, remained poor.

CONCLUSION: The project had created an awareness of IAD in the ICU. There was clear knowledge improvement and nursing staff were able to differentiate IAD from pressure injuries. The skin cleansing and protection regime is now more clear and consistent, and a single standardized product is being used to prevent and treat IAD. There was a small improvement in consistently documenting the condition of the perineal skin of patients with IAD; however, it was beyond the scope of this project to develop a policy and implement an IAD-specific skin assessment tool in the ICU, as this would have improved documentation of IAD in the ICU.