Follow the protocol and kickstart the heart—Intensive care nurses’ reflections on being part of rescue situations in interdisciplinary teams

Abstract

Abstract Aim To describe intensive care nurses' reflections on being part of interdisciplinary emergency teams involved in in‐hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Design A qualitative descriptive design. Methods: Eighteen intensive care nurses from two regions and three hospitals in Sweden were interviewed. The data were analysed with General Inductive Analysis. Results The work for intensive care nurses in the emergency team was reflected in three phases: prevention, intervention and mitigation—referred as before, during and after the CPR situation. Conclusions The findings describe the complexity of being an intensive care nurse in an interdisciplinary emergency team, which entails managing advanced care with limited and unknown resources in a non‐familiar environment. The present findings have important clinical implications concerning the value of having debriefing sessions to reflect on and to talk about obstacles to and prerequisites for performing successful resuscitation.

Keywords

• cardiopulmonary resuscitation
• critical care
• emergency team
• experiences
• interdisciplinary team
• qualitative research