Critical care nursing clinics of North America
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Crit Care Nurs Clin North Am · Dec 2002
ReviewProactive error prevention in the intensive care unit.
Care provided in the ICU accounts for nearly 30% of acute care hospital costs and, with the aging of Americans, there is an increased demand for critical care services [1]. Critical illness reduces an individual's physical resilience. Minute-to-minute care decisions and interventions mean life or death during this acute disease phase. ⋯ This patient population has the least ability to communicate symptoms to health care providers. The risk of adverse events caused by medications or equipment malfunction is higher because patients in the ICU receive twice as many medications as patients in general care units [2] and often require mechanical support of normal body functions, such as breathing, eating, and eliminating body waste. Consequently, the patient in the ICU has a higher exposure to medical error than patients in other areas of the hospital.
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Crit Care Nurs Clin North Am · Dec 2002
A teamwork model to promote patient safety in critical care.
To create a safe health care system, providers must understand teamwork as a complementary relationship of interdependence. Continuing efforts to adopt the aviation model will enable health care providers to examine the role of human performance factors related to fatigue, leadership, and communication among all providers. ⋯ The growing research base continues to examine the problem of health care safety and to test the most effective team training approaches. What is the most effective pattern and timing of communication among providers? What system level changes are needed in the critical care area to improve communication through teamwork and thus create a safer health care system? What are potential points of error in the daily operation that could be alleviated through effective teamwork? Continuing to test the model will ultimately change patient safety.