Intensive Care Unit Patient Safety Team

2005 HSPRSN Investigative Team Award

To develop a system for identifying objective safety-related outcome measures to assist in the design, implementation and evaluation of organizational changes (culture, human resources, care processes, etc) that will improve patient safety in BC's Intensive Care Units.

Profile and Purpose

Within the hospital, critically ill and injured patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) have the most complex medical problems and the highest mortality rate. Their care frequently requires numerous invasive medical procedures and multiple potent medications leading to increased risk for medical errors and adverse events. For these reasons, BC ICU’s are a high-priority setting for patient safety research.

Over the next three years, this research team plans to accomplish the following tasks:

• Improve and disseminate an existing ICU patient database within Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, Fraser Health Authority and Vancouver Island Health Authority to document a baseline measure of objective safety-related outcomes.
• Work with other health authorities in BC on the ongoing development and evaluation of a no-fault web-based incident reporting information system to capture self-reported errors affecting patients, near misses, and environmental or procedural hazards in the ICU.
• Expand the development of methods to recognize medication errors.
• Use existing data systems to measure information related to human resource management in the ICU, assess effects of these variables on error rates and adverse clinical outcomes, and design and test improvements in human resource management.
• Conduct surveys using validated tools to assess organizational culture and specifically, safety culture within ICUs.

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