Intensive care at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre  : an observation of the nurses´daily work

Sammanfattning:

In the western world intensive care is highly specialised with technical and medical resources as well as educated personnel. In many developing countries however there is a lack of these resources in comparison with western standards. The purpose of this qualitative study was to illuminate the nurses and their work in the care of critically ill patients in the intensive care unit at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, Moshi, Tanzania. Data was collected during two weeks through participant observations and informal conversations with the nurses employed at three different intensive care units, one medical intensive care unit and two surgical intensive care units. Two main themes and six headlines were identified and are presented in the results, these were: human resources, medical technical resources, material resources, medical resource, possibilities, challenges and obstacles for the nurses working at the ICU. This study showed that there was an obvious lack of the resources mentioned above and that there was a great need of further education for the nurses working in the ICU to strengthen their knowledge, role and profession.