• Svatka Micik, Nihada Besic, Natalie Johnson, Matilda Han, Stephen Hamlyn, and Hayley Ball.
• Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit, Royal Adelaide Hospital, North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. svatka.micik@health.sa.gov.au
• Intensive Crit Care Nurs. 2013 Oct 1; 29 (5): 261-5.

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to describe an improvement initiative designed to implement nurse sensitive interventions known to reduce patients' risk for ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP), in cardiothoracic intensive care patients. This initiative is a part of one Australian critical care unit's efforts to identify and measure compliance with key nursing interventions known to improve cardiac surgical patients' outcomes. The premise behind the initiative is that improved nursing process and surveillance systems allow emerging trends to catalyse action and motivate nurses to reduce patients' risk for infection acquisition. At five and nine months following implementation of the initiative a>70% compliance rate in 11 out of the 15 nurse sensitive interventions known to reduce patients' risks for VAP and a drop in VAP incidence from 13.4% to 7.69% from per 1000 ventilator days was accomplished.Crown Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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