Knowledge of Endotracheal Suctioning among Critical Care Nurses in Teaching Hospital Intensive Care Unit, Malaysia

Abstract

 Endotracheal suctioning (ETS) is an intervention to remove accumulated mucus from the 
endotracheal tube, trachea, and lower airways in patients who require intubation. This intervention creates a 
large variety of heart-lung interferences which will cause serious complications to patients such as hypoxaemia, 
raised blood pressure, raised intracranial pressures and pneumothorax. It is imperative that nurses are aware of 
these risks and are able to practice according to current research recommendations. The main objective of this 
study is to explore nurses’ knowledge to ETS. This is cross sectional studied by using self-administered 
questionnaire for nurse’s knowledge in performing endotracheal suction to ICU patients.Data collection 
involving 127 nurses in ICUs. The results of this study showed that a majority of the nurses were 
knowledgeable about ETS with a mean score of 71.7±SD10.8. This study has also raised interesting issues 
concerning multiple aspects of endotracheal suctioning among the Critical care nurses (CCNs) and the results 
indicate the needs for teaching intervention to improve knowledge of ETS.