Overcoming nursing barriers to intensive care unit early mobilisation: A quality improvement project

To increase adherence with intensive care unit mobility by developing and implementing a mobility training program that addresses nursing barriers to early mobilisation.

An intensive care unit mobility training program was developed, implemented and evaluated with a pre-test, immediate post-test and eight-week post-test. Patient mobility was tracked before and after training.

A ten bed cardiac intensive care unit.

The training program's efficacy was measured by comparing pre-test, immediate post-test and 8-week post-test scores. Patient mobilisation rates before and after training were compared. Protocol compliance was measured in the post training group.

Nursing knowledge increased from pre-test to immediate post-test (p<0.0001) and pre-test to 8-week post-test (p<0.0001). Mean test scores decreased by seven points from immediate post-test (80±12) to 8-week post-test (73±14). Fear significantly decreased from pre-test to immediate post-test (p=0.03), but not from pre-test to 8-week post-test (p=0.06) or immediate post-test to 8-week post-test (p=0.46). Post training patient mobility rates increased although not significantly (p=0.07). Post training protocol compliance was 78%.

The project successfully increased adherence with intensive care unit mobility and indicates that a training program could improve adoption of early mobility.