Unit rationale, description and aim
Contemporary nursing practice embeds scientific evidence-based concepts for the promotion of positive health outcomes and application of care across a lifespan continuum. With a focus on quality assurance, harm mitigation, accountability, and patient satisfaction for the purpose of professional accreditation, the role of the specialist critical care nurse encompasses a multifaceted approach to nursing care. The role of the critical care nurse encompasses evidence-based practice, ethical clinical considerations, person and family centred care, cultural safety and the ability to differentiate between the acute and chronic care trajectories of the healthcare consumer with life-threatening conditions.
This unit supports the acquisition of advanced knowledge and skills to ensure that nurses understand their role in continuing professional development, and the provision of safe and respectful specialist nursing care. This unit focuses on and extends the role of the critical care specialist nurse and the significance of that role in the delivery of specialised care in the intensive care setting. The unit aims to support students to consolidate theory and practice through the analysis and evaluation of evidence-based, ethical specialist practice in the care of a patient with critical illness.
Learning outcomes
To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.
Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.
Explore the graduate capabilities.
Implement a structured holistic assessment of comp...
Learning Outcome 01
Explore the socio-cultural, legal and ethical issu...
Learning Outcome 02
Adapt and apply the core principles of intensive c...
Learning Outcome 03
Critically reflect on teamwork, leadership and the...
Learning Outcome 04
Assess risk factors in intensive care, problem sol...
Learning Outcome 05
Content
Topics will include:
- Organisation and management of an intensive care unit
- Scope of critical care practice
- Evidence-based nursing practice (5A’s process)
- Holistic critical care nursing
- Technology in critical care
- Interprofessional collaboration practice
- Evaluation and monitoring of a critically ill patient
- Different modes of invasive and non-invasive patient monitoring
- Life support equipment for specialized diagnostic or therapeutic procedures
- Pain and pain management
- Sedation, agitation and delirium management
- Ethical and legal issues in critical care
- Ethics and the law
- Ethical principles
- Application of ethical principles to the care of the critically ill
- End of life decision making
- Withdrawing and withholding treatment
- Framework for resolving ethical problems/decision-making principles
- Person- and family-centred care in the ICU
- Patient, family centred care
- Needs of family during critical illness
- Communication
- Culture care & cultural responsiveness
- Working with culturally and linguistically diverse patients and families
- Spiritual and religious considerations
- Resuscitation & life support
- Cardiac arrest
- Resuscitation systems and processes
- Basic life support
- Evaluation during resuscitation
- Defibrillation
- Advanced life support (airway management & medication administration)
- ECMO
- Post-resuscitation care
- Special considerations (family presence, ceasing CPR)
- End of life care and bereavement
- Patient comfort and palliative care
- CPR/DNR
- Family care
- Decision making
- Withdrawal of mechanical ventilation
- Care of the critical care nurse
- Organ donation
- Types of donations
- Regulation and management
- Nursing responsibilities
- Organ donor care
- Donation after cardiac death
- Critical care for other patient populations
- Pediatric considerations
- Obstetric considerations
- Older adult patients
- Role of the critical care nurse in quality and safety
- Practice standards for specialist critical care nurses (ACCCN)
- Clinical practice guidelines
- Nurses’ leadership in intensive care setting
- Clinical reasoning and decision making
- Teamwork
- Mental wellbeing of critical care nurses
- Moral distress/burnout among intensive care nurses
- The impact of Covid-19
- Self-care of critical care nurses
Assessment strategy and rationale
In order to pass this unit, students are expected to submit two graded assessment tasks and achieve a cumulative grade of at least 50% across all assessments. The assessment strategy in this unit encourages critical analysis that embodies leadership qualities in the specialist clinical setting. The deep level learning provides students with the opportunity to develop their capacity to interpret, translate, apply, and evaluate evidence-based nursing care related to the healthcare consumer requiring critical care. Reflection is recognised as an attribute of an expert clinician and students further develop this skill by focusing on an ethical issue that arises in the specialist intensive care setting. Contemporary clinical practice requires the registered nurse to demonstrate the ability to deliver clinical care and understand the theoretical underpinnings which direct this care through continued professional development. This requirement exists because nurses are accountable for their actions and choices which may have severe adverse health consequences for healthcare consumers and/or communities. The literature review will allow students to demonstrate their ability to identify different levels of literature and evidence and apply the reading to demonstrate sound knowledge required to support safe and high-quality nursing care. Assessments in this unit encourage understanding of the complexity of professional roles and responsibilities expected within critical care nursing practice. The assessment tasks for this unit are designed to demonstrate the achievement of each learning outcome.
Overview of assessments
Assessment Task 1: Reflective Essay Enables stud...
Assessment Task 1: Reflective Essay
Enables students to reflect on an ethical issue in the specialist intensive care setting.
50%
Assessment Task 2: Literature Review Enables stu...
Assessment Task 2: Literature Review
Enables students to: Locate, organise, analyse and synthesise information related to a complex condition.
50%
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
Teaching and learning strategies utilised in this unit will support students in meeting the aim and achieving the learning outcomes relevant to this unit as well as to the broader course learning outcomes. This unit is offered via the ACU Online platform and uses active learning to support students to reflect on key pathophysiological concepts that contribute to comorbidity and potential ethical, physical, psychological, and psychosocial impacts experienced by critically ill patients. Students will focus on their role as specialist intensive care nurses in assessing and managing complex conditions. This is in accordance with the Australian College of Critical Care Nurses’ Practice Standards with a focus on risk assessment and harm mitigation. In constructing specialist intensive care nursing knowledge and skill, students will evaluate care strategies that they will be able to apply within the specialist intensive care setting. Students are required to complete online activities and assessments to demonstrate the application of knowledge. The learning and teaching strategy used in this unit allows flexibility for students while ensuring they have expert support. These modes of delivery assist students in linking knowledge, understanding and skills to the intensive care nursing context, and to develop shared meanings through online experiential reflections and discussions.
Representative texts and references
Recommended text
Aitken, L., Marshall, A., & Chaboyer, W. (2019). Critical Care Nursing. (4th ed.). Elsevier.
Greenhalgh, T., Bidwell, J., Crisp, E., Lambros, A., & Warland, J. (2020). Understanding research methods for evidence-based practice in health (Second edition. ed.). John Wiley & Sons Australia.
Hoffmann, T., Bennett, S., & Del Mar, C. (2017). Evidence-based practice across the health professions (3rd ed.). Elsevier Australia.
Knights, K. M., Darroch, S., Rowland, A., & Bushell, M. (2023). Pharmacology for health professionals (6th edition. ed.). Elsevier Australia.
McCance, K. L., Huether, S. E., Brashers, V. L., & Rote, N. S. (2019). Pathophysiology : the biologic basis for disease in adults and children (Eighth edition ed.). Elsevier.
Patton, K. T., & Thibodeau, G. A. (2019). Anatomy & physiology (Adapted International edition. ed.). Elsevier.
Taylor, K., & Guerin, P. (2019). Health care and Indigenous Australians : cultural safety in practice (Third edition. ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Urden, L. D., Stacy, K. M., & Lough, M. E. (2022). Critical care nursing: Diagnosis and management. (9th ed.). Elsevier.
Other recommended references
Recommendations for further texts will be made in the extended unit outline based on the specialty of the students enrolled in the unit.