Ações para segurança do paciente em unidades de terapia intensiva neonatais

Abstract

The neonatal intensive care unit requires patient safety, since it provides care to newborns, most of whom have more fragile living conditions than usual. Furthermore, it is a distressing environment for family members and should therefore be aligned with good health practices and humanized care. Thus, the study aims to identify actions to promote patient safety in neonatal intensive care units. This is an integrative literature review, carried out in the databases Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, Latin American and Caribbean Literature in Health Sciences, Unified Health System Collection and Nursing Database, through the Virtual Health Library. Articles related to the theme, with full text, available free of charge, in English and Portuguese, published between January 2013 and September 2023 were selected. However, those that were not related to the guiding question of the research, repeatedly indexed, editorials and experience reports were excluded. Data tabulation and analysis was carried out using the Rayyan® software, which is a bibliography manager. The following data were analyzed: author(s), date of publication, place of study, objectives, methodology and level of evidence, considering the classification system of the Joanna Briggs Institute. That said, some variables were extracted, such as patient safety actions in the neonatal intensive care unit and errors and adverse events resulting from this care. The final sample resulted in 12 articles, which were fully evaluated and included in the review. The selected studies were equally divided between the years 2013 to 2018 and 2019 to 2023. The predominant type of research was exploratory descriptive analysis, with a qualitative approach. The patient safety actions that were most frequently mentioned in the articles included instrumental measures, safe communication, and family involvement in care. The studies showed that patient safety can reduce the occurrence of errors and adverse events through interventions that encourage changes or elimination of habits that are unfavorable to the quality of care. However, it is fair to emphasize the importance of a healthy working day for health professionals, which establishes a decent workload and the adequate distribution of the number of employees for the number of patients, avoiding the deterioration of the foundations of patient safety.