• Tasnim Sinuff, John Muscedere, Deborah J Cook, Peter M Dodek, William Anderson, Sean P Keenan, Gordon Wood, Richard Tan, Marilyn T Haupt, Michael Miletin, Redouane Bouali, Xuran Jiang, Andrew G Day, Janet Overvelde, Daren K Heyland, and Canadian Critical Care Trials Group.
• Sunnybrook Research Institute, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center and Interdepartmental Division of Critical Care Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. taz.sinuff@sunnybrook.ca
• Crit. Care Med. 2013 Jan 1; 41 (1): 15-23.

ObjectiveVentilator-associated pneumonia is an important cause of morbidity and mortality in critically ill patients. Evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of ventilator-associated pneumonia may improve outcomes, but optimal methods to ensure implementation of guidelines in the intensive care unit are unclear. Hence, we determined the effect of educational sessions augmented with reminders, and led by local opinion leaders, as strategies to implement evidence-based ventilator-associated pneumonia guidelines on guideline concordance and ventilator-associated pneumonia rates.DesignTwo-year prospective, multicenter, time-series study conducted between June 2007 and December 2009.SettingEleven ICUs (ten in Canada, one in the United States); five academic and six community ICUs.PatientsAt each site, 30 adult patients mechanically ventilated >48 hrs were enrolled during four data collection periods (baseline, 6, 15, and 24 months).InterventionGuideline recommendations for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of ventilator-associated pneumonia were implemented using a multifaceted intervention (education, reminders, local opinion leaders, and implementation teams) directed toward the entire multidisciplinary ICU team. Clinician exposure to the intervention was assessed at 6, 15, and 24 months after the introduction of this intervention.Measurements And Main ResultsThe main outcome measure was aggregate concordance with the 14 ventilator-associated pneumonia guideline recommendations. One thousand three hundred twenty patients were enrolled (330 in each study period). Clinician exposure to the multifaceted intervention was high and increased during the study: 86.7%, 93.3%, 95.8%, (p < .001), as did aggregate concordance (mean [SD]): 50.7% (6.1), 54.4% (7.1), 56.2% (5.9), 58.7% (6.7) (p = .007). Over the study period, ventilator-associated pneumonia rates decreased (events/330 patients): 47 (14.2%), 34 (10.3%), 38 (11.5%), 29 (8.8%) (p = .03).ConclusionsA 2-yr multifaceted intervention to enhance ventilator-associated pneumonia guideline uptake was associated with a significant increase in guideline concordance and a reduction in ventilator-associated pneumonia rates.

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