This article mainly discusses the causes of acute confusion and the factors affecting them among patients in intensive care units, while also identifying relevant assessment tools and important points for consideration in medical care. Clinically, it is often observed that patients in intensive care units (ICU) develop changes in the neurotransmitters of the brain that are due to rapid changes in their disease or to attention disorders or cognitive disorders resulting from lack of stimuli from the external environment in a closed space. These patients mostly fail to cooperate in their treatment, which leads to the occurrence of complications and further increases the probability of disability and death. Consequently, the workload of the ICU nurses becomes heavier, the patient's hospitalization is prolonged, and the hospital's costs increase. Usually nurses, who look after patients 24 hours a day, are the clinicians who first discover the patients' changes in physiology and psychology. In today's clinical practice, however, we lack an assessment tool which can help ICU nurses to diagnose early, and in a rapid, simple and effective way, the cognitive and attention disorders of patients in order to provide early medical interventions and effective nursing interventions and reduce the incidence of various complications. With reference to relevant domestic and foreign research reports, the author identifies some acute confusion assessment tools and relevant information on nursing interventions for the benefit of nurses, and as guidance in their clinical work.