The mismatch between intensive care unit (ICU) bed availability and demand may be improved with timely patient discharges, however little is known about the nature and contributing factors of discharge delays. This study investigated the impact of a specific intervention--the ICU liaison nurse role--in reducing ICU discharge delay using a prospective block intervention study. One hundred and ei...

Daily routine chest radiographs (CR) are commonly performed in surgical ICU. Unnecessary CR increase costs and expose the staff and the patients to radiation risk. The goal of our study was to estimate the value of daily routine CR in the ICU and to determine the correlation between CR and physical findings in surgical ICU patients. Prospective observational study was conducted during period of...

BACKGROUND The intensive care unit (ICU) environment exposes patients to noise levels that may result in substantial sleep disruption. There is a need to accurately describe the intensity pattern and source of noise in the ICU in order to develop effective sound abatement strategies. The objectives of this study were to determine nocturnal noise levels and their variability and the related sour...

OBJECTIVE Matching healthcare staff resources to patient needs in the ICU is a key factor for quality of care. We aimed to assess the impact of the staffing-to-patient ratio and workload on ICU mortality. DESIGN We performed a multicenter longitudinal study using routinely collected hospital data. SETTING Information pertaining to every patient in eight ICUs from four university hospitals f...

Methods Observational analysis using ENVIN-HELICS database of all the infected and/or colonized patients in our ICU between January and May 2014 and to describe the multi-disciplinary measures performed for it ́s control: hygiene measures (strict hand hygiene, patients daily wash with special chlorhexidine gel, strict contact isolation), clustering measures (grouping all positive patients in ICU...

Accurate patient state assessments from the interpretation of noisy physiological time-series data are important in patient monitoring in critical care medicine. Given the large volumes of respiratory signal data originating from multiple monitoring devices in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), we believe it is better to convert this data into trends that have abstractions increasing, decreasing or...

Transport of patients from the intensive care unit (ICU) to another area of the hospital can pose serious risks if the patient has not been assessed prior to transport. Recently, the Department of Critical Care Medicine, Calgary Health Region, experienced two adverse events during transport. A subgroup of the Department's Patient Safety and Adverse Events team developed an ICU patient transport...

We recommend several actions that could improve hospitals' abilities to deliver critical care during epidemics involving large numbers of victims. In the absence of careful pre-event planning, demand for critical care services may quickly exceed available intensive care unit (ICU) staff, beds and equipment, leaving the bulk of the infected populace without benefit of potentially lifesaving crit...

Hospital-acquired infections have profound social, economic, and personal costs to patients in the intensive care unit (ICU). Numerous risk factors, such as poor nutrition and hyperglycemia, directly involve patients. Meanwhile, hand hygiene, environmental cleaning, and appropriate hospital staffing can impact ICU infection rates. A multidirectional approach-including continuing staff education...