LAUSR

Critical Care Medicine • Volume 46 • Number 1 (Supplement) www.ccmjournal.org Learning Objectives: Nurses’ perceptions of the utility of capnography monitoring are inconsistent in previous studies. Our aim was to discover the limitations of a uniform education effort in bringing about consistent views of capnography among nurses. We hypothesized that barriers to acceptance of capnography could be identified through a nursing survey. Methods: A survey was administered to nurses in three subacutecare floors participating in a clinical trial employing capnography monitoring in a large, urban tertiary care hospital. A fivepoint Likert scale was used to assess the value and acceptance nurses attached to the practice. Results: Survey results indicated inconsistency in the understanding of capnography, coupled with varying degrees of acceptance for the practice. The mean for the level of perceived impact of capnography use on patient safety was 3.86, whereas those nurses who felt that patients would be more at risk if capnography were removed were represented by a mean of 2.57. The levels of urgency attached to apnea alarms (mean 3.57, standard deviation 1.57) were lower than those for alarms for oxygen saturation violations (mean 3.67, standard deviation 1.32). The necessity of pulse oximetry was perceived as much higher than that of capnography monitoring (mean 1.76, standard deviation 1.34), where “1” represented pulse oximetry as more necessary and “5” represented capnography as more necessary. Conclusions: Nursing acceptance of capnography monitoring is a difficult endpoint to achieve and may require more than providing relevant educational resources. In order to have greater success with the implementation of similar monitoring, there is a need for better accounting for the external and internal influences on nurse perceptions and values.