How to prevent Intensive Care Unit-acquired weakness: decrypting MV “bundles”
Patients on mechanical ventilation (MV) in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) have high mortality rates, and, even among survivors, morbidity is significant. In Brazil, the average duration of mechanical ventilation in the Intensive Care Unit is around one week, and these
Do you have 3 minutes during your day to help reduce infection risk and ICU acquired complications?
How can you do this effectively and, in an evidence, based manner? Several studies have shown that the use of bedside checklists can increase adherence to measures to prevent serious events, such as VAP, ICS, and DVT, and reduce the duration of
How to evaluate my ICU’s performance?
Why evaluate my ICU’s performance? A useful and commonly used definition of quality is often based on the conceptual structure of Donabedian, in which the measurement of health quality is related to structure, process, and results. Thus, making measuring the time
The Importance of Estimating a Patient’s ICU Length of Stay
Why estimate the length of stay at an ICU? In a scenario where there is increasing pressure to increase efficiency in the hospital sector, safely reducing hospitalization times, especially for ICU patients, is a strategy that has been widely
Top 5 Priorities for a New ICU Director During the First Year
During the first year, the ICU director should take a snapshot of the ICU situation and invest time and resources to acquire good and real data that will drive priorities of care and management. After that, implementation of basic protocols
We need to be prepared for new outbreaks and health crises: a perspective for ICUs
During the years 2020 and 2021, the SARS-COV2 (COVID-19) pandemic generated an unprecedented number of patients with severe pneumonia, requiring hospitalization and intensive care. In these months we observed the saturation and collapse of health systems and the high
Using analytics to evaluate my ICU performance
Recent progress in the electronic medical records (EMR) for ICU and cloud-based analyses allows us to apply the Donabedian principles, created 40 years ago, in near real-time. Basically, there are three types of indicators based on the Donabedian Categorization (Donabedian
How can data help in the management of my ICU?
Recent studies demonstrate the potential of using data to implement measures aimed at reducing healthcare costs and, at the same time, improving the quality of care. The best risk assessment and clinical profile of ICU patients through the management of
How can Benchmarking assist in the ICU Management?
Benchmarking is a management strategy that consists of the process of searching and comparing the best practices evidenced in the real world. Epimed Solutions, a leading company in the clinical information segment, allows an analysis to measure the quality and
How has data management improved ICU performance?
The ICU is a highly technological environment where each patient data generates thousands of data-points per day. However, most of this data is usually wasted thus missing the opportunity of using this data to understand patient profile and improve outcomes. For