Introduction: Careful oral hygiene is essential for ensuring the safety of intubated patients as it can reduce the risk of injury to the oral cavity and the onset of a disease such as ventilator-associated pneumonia. Nurses are responsible for planning and implementation of personalized oral care to intubated patients. Purpose: Purpose is to describe oral care practices performed by critical care nurses for orally intubated critically ill patients. The goal of the diploma work is determined in an evidence-based way the most appropriate way of cleaning the oral cavity and to show the individual steps in the oral hygiene of an intubated patient with a healthy oral mucosa. Methods: Descriptive method is based on a systematic review of domestic and foreign scientific and professional literature in the period 2007-2017 using the databases Medline and CINAHL and the COBIB.SI. 10 articles were included in the qualitative analysis. Results: Analyzed articles show that oral care protocols are inconsistency. Soft aspiration toothbrushes are more effective in removing toothbrush than foam sponges. The use of chlorhexidine reduces the bacterial load of the oral cavity and the risk of pneumonia with mechanical ventilation. Discussion and conclusion: The provision of mouth care for orally intubated patients is a complex, multifaceted practice of nurses. Oral care policies and practices vary from state to state, hospital to hospital. Protocols and practices of oral care are inconsistency and lacking altogether. Despite the numerous international evidence-based guidelines for preventing ventilator-associated pneumonia, no protocol for oral care that includes the type, frequency and duration of oral care practices for orally intubated critically ill adults has been presented guidelines in Slovenian literature. It is necessary to carry out professional training of nurses, targeted research and design of national protocols with precisely determined steps of performing oral hygiene.
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