Introduction: When speech is integral, the interactions will come out automatically; but if the speech is damaged, even the necessary conversation is challenging to handle. While providing nursing care to the patients, nurses must appreciate the uniqueness of each patient and try to promote good health and well-being as much as they can. To do so, the nurses must help the patients to fulfil their needs by adequately listening to the patientsÂ’ 'voices'.
Objective: To appraise available evidence that investigates voiceless among patients in the Intensive Care Unit.
Design: A literature review.
Data sources: Six online databases namely CINAHL, ProQuest, ScienceDirect, Clinical key, Scopus, and Ovid Medline were searched.
Review methods: Relevant studies were identified using the combined approaches of electronic database search and manually searched journals.
Results: Twelve 12 studies met the inclusion criteria. A few topics summarised from the studies provided a general view of the nurse-patient communication in the Intensive Care Unit, barriers and factors that limit the nurse-patient communication, consequences of voicelessness, and the methods to overcome voicelessness.
Conclusion: Supports from nurses are needed by patients, especially when they are mechanically ventilated, for them to make sense of their conditions and to try to cope with it.
Key words: being voiceless, nurse-patient communication, interaction, intensive care unit, ICU's patient, ICU nurses
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