The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is offering a new toolkit to improve safety for mechanically ventilated patients in ICUs.
AHRQ says ICU staff can use the toolkit to apply the principles and methods of AHRQ’s Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) to reduce complications for patients on ventilators, including ventilator-associated pneumonia, which affects as many as 20% of patients who are on a ventilator for more than 48 hours. The toolkit includes resources used by hospitals that participated in the AHRQ Safety Program for Mechanically Ventilated Patients project.
The toolkit has four modules and other resources to help ICUs uncover local defects, implement interventions to prevent ventilator-associated events, and build a sustainable safety culture. The four modules are How To Apply CUSP for Mechanically Ventilated Patients, Technical Bundles, Ventilator-Associated Events and Outcome Measures, Sustainability, and Other Resources.
The toolkit is available online at http://bit.ly/2k6ouJL.
