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Abstract
For many patients admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nutritional support via an enteral feeding tube will be required at some point during their stay. Extensive research has been conducted on the topic of enteral nutrition and best practices for monitoring and delivery of enteral nutrition have continued to evolve. The purpose of this quality improvement project is to identify best practices for monitoring of enteral nutritional intolerance and increase the percentage of targeted nutrition received by patients. Following a review of the literature an Evidenced Based Practice Update was developed for bedside ICU nurses incorporating key recommendations. The distribution of the update will take place after collection of data on the percentage of targeted enteral nutrition delivered to patients for one month then compared to data collected for one month after distribution of the EBP Update. Education sessions will be held on the unit where the update will be reviewed along with conducting a pre- and post-test on the content in the EBP Update. Both the pre/post-test and target nutrition data will be analyzed using t-tests to measure the impact of the intervention. The desired outcome for this project will be an increased percentage of target nutrition delivered to patients and to increase adherence to the practices identified in the update.