Educational intervention with nursing professionals reduces interruption of enteral nutritional support

To evaluate the impact of educational intervention on the occurrence of factors that interfere with the caloric-protein supply to critical and non-critical patients undergoing enteral nutritional therapy. This is an intervention, a field experiment without a control group, carried out in a teaching hospital in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Three training cycles were carried out with nursing professionals over 57 weeks, covering the same content. The data collected were divided into pre-intervention and intervention periods. Interference in caloric-protein support was analyzed based on the evaluation of days with non-conforming nutritional supply and the occurrence of factors that led to non-conformities. Following interventions, there was a significant reduction (p < 0.05) in the number of non-conforming and inadequate days (nutritional supply < 80%), the frequency of occurrence of interfering factors and non-conformities caused by failure to follow the vomiting protocol. The educational intervention was an effective strategy to increase the quality of the therapy evaluated, especially from the fifth day of enteral nutritional therapy onwards.