Missed Care in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit: Effect of Eletronic Reminders  

Background: Missed nursing care is a newly defined concept and refers to any aspect of required patient care that is omitted or delayed. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of electronic reminders on missed care in NICU. Methods: : This is a two groups (before and after) quasi experimental study. A random sampling technique was employed to collect a sample of 70 nurses among two NICUs in an educational hospital in the south east of Iran. Miss care questionnaire was used to determine Missed care before, immediate, and one month after the intervention. The study intervention includes sending electronic reminders regarding nursing care of NICU hospitalized neonate. Data were analyzed using SPSS 20 software, descriptive (frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation), and analytical statistics. The level of significance was considered as 0.05. Results: The results showed that the mean score of missed care was decreased after intervention in the intervention group (6.74±8.47) rather than the control group (18.57±14.59) (P=0.001). The highest and the lowest mean score of missed care before and after the intervention was in general care and oxygen therapy domains in both groups. The second time intervention was one month after did not show any significant differences in the two groups. But decreasing in missed care was shown in both groups. Conclusion: using information technologies like whatsApp is an easy, low cost and available method which could help nurses decrease missed nursing care.