Vol. 2, Issue 1, Part A (2020)

Introduction: Patients admitted to the ICU are susceptible to ocular pathologies like chemosis, exposure keratopathy, lagophthalmos, etc. The ICU staff may over look eye care procedures due to their busy schedule in treating life threatening conditions. Thus a standard eye care protocol will help streamlining eye care in ICUs. Methodology: A group of 75 ICU nurses were given a semi structured questionnaire to assess their knowledge and practice patterns in eye care, in a tertiary health care center in Kolar, and the results were analyzed. Results: This study had 61.2% were females and 38.8% were males. Age, gender, experience in ICU, educational qualification and type of ICU showed no statistically significant association with awareness of the ICU staff. Age, gender, experience in ICU showed no significant association with of the ICU staff.42.8% of the participants who had a diploma certificate had adequate practice patterns or more than those with a degree. This was found to be statistically significant (p<0.05). This study also showed that the practice patterns of 37.5% of PICU staff was better than the staff of other ICUs, however it was not statistically significant. Conclusion: Eye care in ICUs should be more effective, time saving, easy to apply and cost effective. As there are many patients admitted to the ICU and limited number of Ophthalmologists, it is impractical for them to conduct a routine examination for all ICU patients. However, if nurses are trained adequately, they can screen for ocular complications and triage, so that only those requiring special care can be referred to ophthalmologists.