• Patient Handoff Protocols

    Whether they are called handoffs or handovers, it is known from the literature that the transfer of patient information between caregivers at shift changes has the potential for error. Although the U.S. Joint Commission requires healthcare providers to implement a standardised approach to handoff communication as a national patient safety goal, clear...

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  • New Resource for Children

    An activity book for children visiting intensive care units (ICUs) has been published by ICUsteps, the UK intensive care patient and relative support charity. The resource comes with an information sheet for parents and carers to help them support the children, and can be downloaded from the ICUsteps website .   Catherine White, Information Manager,...

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  • Quality in Practice: Towards a Patient-Centred View

    Professor Guidet has been a university medical professor since 1997. He is a member of the research unit INSERM U1136 at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM), the French public organization entirely dedicated to biological, medical and public health research.   Guidet is past President (2008 – 2010) of the French...

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  • National ICU Quality Indicators Revisited

    The last two decades have seen an accelerated interest in quality management in healthcare in general, and also in intensive care specifically. Often safety has been the main issue, but increasingly a more general approach to quality has emerged, in particular with a focus on quality indicators (QI).   It is now more than 15 years since Pronovost...

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  • Emergency Intraosseous Access: Novel Diagnostic and Therapeutic Possibilities and Limitations

    The intraosseous needle is an essential tool in emergency settings when initial vascular access is difficult to achieve. This paper focuses on possible biochemical analyses on blood from emergency intraosseous needles, suggesting principles of use as well as pointing out advantages and shortcomings.   Intraosseous (IO) access has been used...

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  • What Can Psychologists Do in Intensive Care?

    As awareness has grown of the great distress intensive care patients may suffer, units have begun recruiting psychologists to their teams. Intensive care unit psychologists aim to assess and reduce distress for patients, families and staff, to improve outcomes. This paper summarises research on the psychological impact of critical illness, highlights...

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  • Clinical Pharmacist Role in the ICU

    We provide an overview of the various facets of pharmacist practice in the intensive care unit (ICU), the current extent to which pharmacists are present in the ICU, along with a discussion on barriers and lessons learned in garnering support for such a role.   Caring for critically ill patients in an intensive care unit (ICU) is considered...

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  • Protective Ventilation: When and Why to Individualize

    ARDS is Heterogeneous Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a heterogeneous entity. Calfee and colleagues’ analysis of the ARMA and ALVEOLI trials (Calfee et al. 2015) differentiated two ARDS subphenotypes, one of which was categorized by more severe inflammation and worse clinical outcomes. Response to positive end-expiratory pressure...

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  • Indirect Calorimetry to Measure Energy Requirements: From Consensus to Daily Practice

    Why Personalize Nutrition Therapy?   The need for personalized nutrition therapy for ICU patients is shown by several observational studies that measured the energy needs of critically ill patients. The 2005 study by Villet and colleagues found that patients with an energy deficit had an increased number of complications, especially infections...

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  • Optimising Nutrition With an Integrated Nutrition Module: Myth or Reality?

    As a neurointensivist with a strong interest in nutritional support, I was delighted to trial a new integrated nutritional module. We know that nutrition really matters to our ICU patients in the context of first indicators. For example, our research group recently published a paper about two patients with viral meningoencephalitis. Invasive neuromonitoring...

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