The Current State of Glycaemic Control Practice

The Current State of Glycaemic Control Practice

Study involving intensivists from 90 ICUs in northwest Europe confirms significant variability in glycaemic control practices. The study confirmed that there are still controversies over what constitutes optimal glucose management... read more

Priority Levels in Intensive Care at an Academic Public Hospital

Priority Levels in Intensive Care at an Academic Public Hospital

This prospective study of medical records determined the proportion of medical ICU patients in each priority group within a tertiary care academic public hospital. Critical care services can be life-saving, but many patients... read more

The ICM research agenda on ICU-acquired weakness

The ICM research agenda on ICU-acquired weakness

Intensive care unit (ICU)-acquired weakness (ICUAW) develops as a complication of critical illness and may represent the extreme end of a spectrum of weakness that begins with any serious illness regardless of care location.... read more

Preadmission Oral Corticosteroids Are Associated With Reduced Risk of ARDS in Critically Ill Adults With Sepsis

Preadmission Oral Corticosteroids Are Associated With Reduced Risk of ARDS in Critically Ill Adults With Sepsis

The unadjusted occurrence rate of acute respiratory distress syndrome within 96 hours of ICU admission was 35% among patients who had received oral corticosteroids compared with 42% among those who had not (p = 0.107). In... read more

Decision Making Model Enables Resolution of Ethics Issues at the Bedside

Decision Making Model Enables Resolution of Ethics Issues at the Bedside

A study from Switzerland that evaluated implementation of a stepped ethical decision-making model on three intensive care units (ICUs) and two geriatric wards found that it worked well, with staff able to find the time and... read more

Being New in the ICU

Being New in the ICU

Being new in the ICU is not easy. You need to have the passion for critical care so much that you really don’t care how difficult it is. That passion is what gets you through the newbie stress. I was a new grad in the ICU,... read more

An Educational Intervention Optimizes the Use of Arterial Blood Gas Determinations Across ICUs

An Educational Intervention Optimizes the Use of Arterial Blood Gas Determinations Across ICUs

The large scale implementation of guidelines for ABG use reduced the number of inappropriately ordered ABG determinations over seven different multidisciplinary ICUs, without negatively impacting patient care. We saw a reduction... read more

Barriers to Regaining Control within a Constructivist Grounded Theory of Family Resilience in ICU

Barriers to Regaining Control within a Constructivist Grounded Theory of Family Resilience in ICU

This paper discusses families' experiences of their interactions when a relative is admitted unexpectedly to an Australian ICU. A grounded theory methodology was adopted for the study. Data was collected between 2009−2013,... read more

Medical Device Interoperability 4.0: Disruptive Innovation for the ICU

Medical Device Interoperability 4.0: Disruptive Innovation for the ICU

Medical Device Interoperability in the ICU did not undergo any significant innovation in the past 30 years. This is the reason why data integration of medical device data into Electronic Medical Records (EMR/EHR) and Population... read more

National ICU Quality Indicators Revisited

National ICU Quality Indicators Revisited

The use of QI at a national level is a suitable method to focus on quality in healthcare. Independently of public access to the results, a local or national ICU network will have a lot to gain from engaging in the process... read more

Toward the Ideal Ratio of Patients to Intensivists

Toward the Ideal Ratio of Patients to Intensivists

More than 5.7 million patients are admitted annually to an intensive care unit (ICU) in the United States, accounting for approximately 20% of all acute care admissions. With the aging population and its increasing comorbidity... read more

Ultrasound Guidance and Other Determinants of Successful Peripheral Artery Catheterization

Margaret Parker, MD, MCCM, speaks with David B. Kantor, MD, PhD, about the article, "Ultrasound Guidance and Other Determinants of Successful Peripheral Artery Catheterization in Critically Ill Children," published in the... read more

In Hospital ICUs, AI Could Predict Which Patients Are Likely to Die

With streams of data coming from equipment that monitors patients’ vital signs, the ICU seems the perfect setting to deploy artificially intelligent tools that could judge when a patient is likely to take a turn for the... read more

Arterial Blood Gas: Time and Motion Study

Arterial Blood Gas: Time and Motion Study

Nursing workload using the Proxima versus standard arterial blood gas sampling Arterial Blood Gas (ABG) sampling is carried out in intensive care units (ICU) every day. Traditionally the nurse takes the blood sample and... read more

Factors influencing physical activity and rehabilitation in survivors of critical illness

Factors influencing physical activity and rehabilitation in survivors of critical illness

Eighty-nine papers were included. Five major themes and 28 sub-themes were identified, encompassing: (1) patient physical and psychological capability to perform physical activity, including delirium, sedation, illness severity,... read more

The status of intensive care medicine research and a future agenda for very old patients in the ICU

The status of intensive care medicine research and a future agenda for very old patients in the ICU

The "very old intensive care patients" (abbreviated to VOPs; greater than 80 years old) are probably the fastest expanding subgroup of all intensive care unit (ICU) patients. Up until recently most ICU physicians... read more

A Primer on the Perils of Intravenous Fluids – Part 2

A Primer on the Perils of Intravenous Fluids – Part 2

Critically-ill patients all likely have endothelial dysfunction to some degree. resuscitationThis perturbation in microvascular physiology may be underpinned by abnormal glycocalyx structure and function. Sepsis, trauma,... read more