Articles: intensive-care-units.
-
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Pharmacist participation on physician rounds and adverse drug events in the intensive care unit.
Pharmacist review of medication orders in the intensive care unit (ICU) has been shown to prevent errors, and pharmacist consultation has reduced drug costs. However, whether pharmacist participation in the ICU at the time of drug prescribing reduces adverse events has not been studied. ⋯ The presence of a pharmacist on rounds as a full member of the patient care team in a medical ICU was associated with a substantially lower rate of ADEs caused by prescribing errors. Nearly all the changes were readily accepted by physicians.
-
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
The effect of earplugs on sleep measures during exposure to simulated intensive care unit noise.
Sleep deprivation may contribute to impaired immune function, ventilatory compromise, disrupted thermoregulation, and delirium. Noise levels in intensive care units may be related to disturbed sleep patterns, but noise reduction has not been tested in this setting. ⋯ The results provide a reasonable basis for testing the effects of earplugs on the sleep of critically ill subjects.
-
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Prevention of nosocomial infection in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) through the use of selective digestive decontamination.
To assess the effectiveness of selective digestive decontamination (SDD) on the control of nosocomial infection (NI) in critically ill pediatric patients. ⋯ SDD was effective in controlling respiratory and urinary tract infections in children admitted to the PICU, but it did not reduce the incidence of other types of nosocomial infection.
-
Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. · Aug 1998
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical TrialOutreach education to improve quality of rural ICU care. Results of a randomized trial.
This study tests whether an outreach educational program tailored to institutional specific patient care practices would improve the quality of care delivered to mechanically ventilated intensive care unit (ICU) patients in rural hospitals. The study was conducted as a randomized control trial using 20 rural Iowa hospitals as the unit of analysis. Twelve randomly selected hospitals received an outreach educational program. ⋯ Unfortunately, the program had no detectable effects on the clinical outcomes of mortality or nosocomial events. We conclude that an outreach program of this type can effectively improve processes of care in rural ICUs. However, improving processes of care may not always translate into improvement of specific outcomes.
-
Critical care medicine · Jul 1998
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical TrialA prospective, randomized, double-blind, controlled clinical trial of enteral immunonutrition in the critically ill. Guy's Hospital Intensive Care Group.
To assess the effects of enteral immunonutrition (IMN) on hospital mortality and length of stay in a heterogeneous group of critically ill patients. ⋯ While the administration of enteral IMN to a general, critically ill population did not affect mortality, those patients in whom it was possible to achieve early enteral nutrition with Impact had a significant reduction in the morbidity of their critical illness.