| Intubated and mechanically ventilated patients are vulnerable to respiratory tract infections. In response, the Ontario government has recently mandated surveillance and reporting of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP). Serious respiratory infections---and the related costs of additional care---can be reduced, in part, through oral hygiene. However, the literature asserts that oral care is neglected in busy, high-tech settings. Despite these concerns, little research has examined how mouth care happens in the critical care unit. The purpose of this institutional ethnography (IE) was to explore the social organization of mouth care in one critical care unit in Ontario, Canada. As a reflexive and critical method of inquiry, IE focuses on features of everyday life that often go unnoticed. In paying special attention to texts, the ethnographer traces how institutional forces that arrive from outside the practice setting coordinate experiences and activities. Inquiry began in the field with day/night participant observation to better understand the particularities of nursing care for orally intubated patients. Other data sources included reflexive fieldnotes, stakeholder interviews, and transcripts as well as work documents and artifacts. Over time, the analysis shifted from the critical care unit to the larger social context of Ontario's Critical Care Transformation Strategy (OCCTS). Analysis traced the discursive and translocal social relations that permeate nursing work. Findings revealed a disjuncture between the ideals of VAP prevention and the actualities of mouth care. Tensions and contradictions emerged as nurses described their location within an expansive accountability network: nursing duties now extend beyond oral care to a controversial project of epidemiological surveillance. Patient comfort and safety now rest upon a hidden nursing agenda to overcome limited time, training and tools in oral care. Nurses worried that the effectiveness of preventative oral care was inhibited by technical problems of application that remain uninvestigated and unresolved. As a counterpoint to assertions that oral care is neglected, this study demonstrates how nursing knowledge and agency is obscured. Because international infection-prevention guidelines increasingly endorse oral care, novel research investigating the practice problems nurses encounter is warranted. |
