Factors affecting prolonged intensive care unit stay in Nigist Eleni Mohammed Memorial Hospital, Hosanna, Southern Ethiopia

The reason for a long stay in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is unknown in most cases, but there are some risk factors that can prolong the patients’ stay in the ICU. However, the threshold of prolonged length of stay is useful in analyzing the quality of health care and hospital costs. The main objective of this study was to assess the factors affecting prolonged intensive care unit stay in Nigist Eleni Mohammed Memorial Hospital from January, 2015 to January, 2016. Institutional based cross sectional study design was conducted. Census was used to include all study participants admitted to intensive care. Regular supervision and follow up was made. Data was entered into Epi info version 7 by investigators and was transported to statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 20 for analysis. Bivariate and multivariate analysis was used to identify factors associated with patient’s outcome. A total of 280 patients were included in the study by census. The mean length of stay in the intensive care unit was 5.49 ± 4.36. Majority of patients (61.4%) had poor nutrition status. In addition to their underlying diseases, majority of the patients in the intensive care units had one or more comorbidities. Poor nutritional status, male sex, presence of comorbidity and unplanned extubation was significantly associated with length of stays in intensive care unit at p-value less than 0.05. In this study, it was found that unconscious patients had about two times more likelihood to have prolonged length of stays in intensive care unit than conscious patients (AOR 1.724; 95% CI: 809 to 3.676). Higher proportions of patients stayed in the intensive care unit for more than three days. Therefore, the implication of this study was to recommend the decrease in length of intensive care unit stays in medically appropriate ways. Key words:  Intensive care unit, Ethiopia, length of stay, patient management.