749. Wide Variation in the Use of External Cooling Blankets Among Adult Intensive Care Unit Nurses for Fever

BACKGROUND: There are limited data on whether external cooling blankets (ECBs) are beneficial in the treatment of fever that is not related to malignant hyperthermia (MH). There are no established national guidelines for the use of ECBs for fevers other than for MH. Thus, there may be a wide variation in nursing practice related to their use. METHODS: We performed a cross-sectional survey of adult intensive care unit (ICU) nurses at our hospital, using SurveyMonkeyTM, to evaluate nursing practices related to the use of ECBs in febrile patients other than MH. Data collected from the survey included years of experience as an ICU nurse, type of ICU, when ECBs are used and temperature of initiation and discontinuation. Continuous variables were compared using Student’s t-test and categorical variables were described as frequency distributions. Data were analyzed using SPSS v. 25.0 and a P-value of 0.05 or less was considered to indicate statistical significance. RESULTS: We invited 150 nurses to participate in the survey, 61 responded (40.7%). The mean number of years worked in an ICU was 8.6 ± 9.4 years (range: 1–34), 14 (23%) worked in a cardiovascular ICU (CVICU), 22 (36%) worked in a medical ICU (MICU), and 25 (41%) in a surgical ICU (SICU). A total of 58 (95.1%) of nurses reported using ECBs for fever, with 50 (82%) of nurses using ECBs only when other methods failed. MICU nurses (31.8%) were more likely to report using ECBs prior to failed attempt of other anti-pyrexia methods than SICU (16%) and CVICU (0.0%) nurses. There was no association between initiation and termination of ECB use by ICU type, years of nursing experience or a given range of temperature values. CONCLUSION: There was a wide variation of practice among ICU nurses as it relates to the use of ECBs in patients with fevers. Medical ICU nurses tended to use ECBs before failure of other methods compared with other ICU nurses. Standardized protocols should be developed for their use based on existing medical literature. Further studies should be performed to confirm our findings. DISCLOSURES: All authors: No reported disclosures.