Determining the surgical intensive care nurses' skills to identify ankle contracture with case analysis. This descriptive study was conducted with 61 nurses over the age of 18 who volunteered to participate in the study from the surgical intensive care units of two university hospitals between February and March 2019. In the collection of data, the Sociodemographic and Occupational Characteristics Form and Ankle Contracture Identification Test were used. Of the nurses, 82.0% did not receive in-service training on the ankle contracture, 32.8% frequently encountered ankle contracture in patients, 90.2% stated that the development of ankle contracture in patients was related to nursing care and 86.9% reported that it is preventable. As a result of the four case analyzes given to the nurses to identify ankle contracture, immobilization (90.5% - 91.7%), age (7.1% - 82.1%), length of stay (45.2%- 82.1%) and gender (4.8%-26.2%) were stated as risk factors by nurses in all four cases. While 26.2% of the nurses stated cooperating with a physiotherapist in the first case as the first intervention to prevent ankle contracture, 47.5% in the second case, 39.3% in the third case, and 41% in the fourth case mentioned changing position as the first preventive intervention. Almost all the nurses determined that the patient's bed dependency was the primary risk factor, while they were seen to give priority to the change of position in the order of interventions to prevent ankle contracture.
Key words: Nursing, ankle contracture, foot drop, intensive care
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