Working Toward a Safer ICU

A new guide can help healthcare facilities protect patients from adverse events in intensive care units (ICUs).

ECRI Institute (Plymouth Meeting, PA, USA), an independent nonprofit organization that researches best approaches to improving patient care, has announced the availability of a new guide and compact disk (CD) that provide a roadmap for implementing risk management and quality improvement plans in the ICU. The 150-page guide can help facilities assess the ICU environment to identify improvement priorities; educate ICU staff about patient safety and engage them in improvement efforts; develop clinical approaches that improve ICU patient outcomes; and emphasize safe selection and use of ICU medical devices and technology.

Each guide comes with a CD containing time-saving tools to help critical care physicians, critical care nurses, ICU managers, administrators of critical care services, clinical engineering departments, risk managers, and patient safety officers develop ICU improvement plans or enhance existing ones. The tools include self-assessment tools to help evaluate patient safety in critical care units, sample policies, education tools (such as slide shows and teaching plans), and links to additional online resources.

"This guide provides hospitals with the knowledge to capitalize on opportunities to improve patient safety in the ICU,” said Ronni Solomon, J.D., executive vice president and general counsel, ECRI Institute. "The wide range of tools and examples presents concrete risk reduction practices to prevent harm.”


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ECRI Institute