Intervenções de enfermagem na terapia intensiva em pacientes com covid-19: revisão integrativa.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic poses significant challenges to patient care in intensive care units, particularly due to the clinical severity of two critically ill patients and the complexity of care, as well as the significant increase in the number of hospitalizations, workload, scarcity of human and material resources, and constant contamination, evidenced by the vulnerability of professionals and the need to reorganize health services. In this scenario, sick individuals play a central role on the frontline of care, demanding safe, evidence-based interventions aimed at sustaining life, preventing complications, and promoting the humanization of care. Objective: To map national and international scientific publications on interventions for diseases in intensive care during the COVID-19 pandemic. This integrative review was conducted in the Virtual Health Library, consulting the SciELO, PubMed, LILACS, and MEDLINE databases, using the descriptors, according to the keywords: "illness interventions," "intensive therapy," "COVID-19," "critical patients," and using the Boolean operator "AND." Complete scientific articles, made available in full, free of charge, published in reconstructed scientific journals in Portuguese and English, with a timeframe between 2020 and 2025 that meet the research objectives, will be included. Duplicate articles, editorials, letters to the editor, reflective studies, coursework, master's dissertations, and doctoral theses will be excluded. The final results of these articles, whose most published years were 2020 and 2023, will be identified, using methodologies such as integrative and reflective reviews, cross-sectional theoretical research, systematic reviews, meta-analysis, and experience reports on technological innovation. Seven national and international publications were retrieved, predominantly from the Virtual Health Library, followed by PubMed and Medline, with level of evidence V. The evidence suggests that interventions for the disease focus on hemodynamic monitoring, ventilatory management, prone positioning, pressure injury prevention, and the use of assistive technologies such as transfer sheets. Complication prevention strategies include the adoption of standardized protocols, the reorganization of services, the appropriate use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and ongoing training of multidisciplinary teams. It is concluded that patients play an essential role on the front lines of care for critically ill patients with COVID-19, reinforcing the importance of safe, humane, and evidence-based care, as well as the need for investment in human resources, protocols, and ongoing health education.