Sedation vacation for pt on paralytics

[Karolyte]

Hi! I have a question for the ICU nurses. I am a student, therefore, I do not have experience but I have curiosity. I know that sedation vacations help to prevent VAP, but how about patients that are getting paralytics, who are sedated with propofol and vented? Is there any nursing research about it? I did my search but was not able to find any.

[lysd]

You will start weaning off of sedation and paralytics once the patient is stable enough to start weaning down on the FiO2 on the ventillator and diagnostics and ABG's indicate that the patient is ready. There is a lot of research out there on sedation vacations as well as preventing VAP's, if you have access to a database such as EbscoHost you can find a lot of information there.