Aims:

Identify factors that interfere in the provision of oral hygiene care, developed by nurses, to orotracheally intubated patients in intensive care units, on primary scientific evidence.

Methods:

A systematic literature review study, developed according to the Joanna Briggs Institute protocol. To obtain the articles, a search on B-On( and PubMed( was made. The terms used in the search took into account the vocabulary indexed to the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) database, having been structured according to Boolean operators, with the following combination in English: “Oral Hygiene” AND “Pneumonia, Ventilator-Associated” OR “Pneumonia, Ventilator Associated” AND “Critical Care Nursing”. Articles published between December 2017 and December 2020, in English, Portuguese and Spanish, available in full, published in peer-reviewed scientific journals (peer review) and which fit the PICO question developed for the study, were defined as limiting.

Results:

After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, eight articles of a primary and qualitative nature were included in the review that address the factors that influence the provision of oral hygiene care by nurses to patients undergoing orotracheal intubation.

Conclusions:

The oral hygiene care practices provided to users under orotracheal intubation, by nurses, are influenced by their knowledge, attitudes, available resources, training and institutional policies, as well as by factors related to the user that are mainly related to difficulties in access to the oral cavity.

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