Effects of staff training and electronic event monitoring on long-term adherence to lung-protective ventilation recommendations

Quality improvement project to improve adherence to lung protective ventilation guidelines

INTRODUCTION

Lung protective ventilation (LPV) is advocated for all patients requiring mechanical ventilation (MV), for any duration of time, to prevent worsening lung injury. Previous studies proved simple interventions can increase awareness of LPV and disease pathophysiology as well as improve adherence to LPV guidelines.

OBJECTIVE

To assess the impact of a multi-component LPV quality improvement project (QIP) on adherence to LPV guidelines.

METHODS

Tidal volume data for all patients requiring MV at a large, tertiary UK critical care unit were collected retrospectively over 3, 6 months, Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles between September 2019 and August 2022. These cycles included the sequential implementation of LPV reports, bedside whiteboards and targeted education led by a multispecialty working group.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE

Adherence against predetermined targets of <5% of MV hours spent at >10 mL/kg predicted body weight (PBW) and >75% of MV hours spent <8 mL/kg PBW for all patients requiring MV.

RESULTS

408 949 hours (17 040 days) of MV data were analysed. Improved LPV adherence was demonstrated throughout the QIP. During mandated MV, time spent >10 mL/kg PBW reduced from 7.65% of MV hours to 4.04% and time spent <8 mL/kg PBW improved from 68.86% of MV hours to 71.87% following the QIP. During spontaneous MV, adherence improved with a reduction in time spent >10 mL/kg PBW from baseline to completion (13.2% vs 6.75%) with increased time spent <8 mL/kg PBW (62.74% vs 72.25%). Despite demonstrating improvements in adherence, we were unable to achieve success in all our predetermined targets.

CONCLUSION

This multicomponent intervention including the use of LPV reports, bedside whiteboards and education improves adherence to LPV guidelines. More robust data analysis of reasons for non-adherence to our predetermined targets is required to guide future interventions that may allow further improvement in adherence to LPV guidelines.

Delivery of a novel intervention to facilitate liberation from mechanical ventilation in paediatric intensive care: A process evaluation

BACKGROUND

Prolonged mechanical ventilation increases the risk of mortality and morbidity. Optimising sedation and early testing for possible liberation from invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) has been shown to reduce time on the ventilator. Alongside a multicentre trial of sedation and ventilation weaning, we conducted a mixed method process evaluation to understand how the intervention content and delivery was linked to trial outcomes.

METHODS

10,495 children admitted to 18 paediatric intensive care units (ICUs) in the United Kingdom participated in a stepped-wedge, cluster randomised controlled trial, with 1955 clinical staff trained to deliver the intervention. The intervention comprised assessment and optimisation of sedation levels, and bedside screening of respiratory parameters to indicate readiness for a spontaneous breathing trial prior to liberation from ventilation. 193 clinical staff were interviewed towards the end of the trial. Interview data were thematically analysed, and quantitative adherence data were analysed using descriptive statistics.

RESULTS

The intervention led to a reduced duration of IMV (adjusted median difference- 7.1 hours, 95% CI -9.6 to -5.3, p = 0.01). Overall intervention adherence was 75% (range 59-85%). Ease and flexibility of the intervention promoted it use; designated responsibilities, explicit pathways of decision-making and a shared language for communication fostered proactivity and consistency towards extubation. Delivery of the intervention was hindered by established hospital and unit organisational and patient care routines, clinician preference and absence of clinical leadership.

CONCLUSIONS

The SANDWICH trial showed a significant, although small, reduction in duration of IMV. Findings suggest that greater direction in decision-making pathways, robust embedment of new practice in unit routine, and capitalising on the skills of Advanced Nurse Practitioners and physiotherapists would have contributed to greater intervention effect.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

isrctn.org Identifier: ISRCTN16998143.

Leveraging Clinical Informatics and Data Science to Improve Care and Facilitate Research in Pediatric Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome: From the Second Pediatric Acute Lung Injury Consensus Conference

OBJECTIVES

The use of electronic algorithms, clinical decision support systems, and other clinical informatics interventions is increasing in critical care. Pediatric acute respiratory distress syndrome (PARDS) is a complex, dynamic condition associated with large amounts of clinical data and frequent decisions at the bedside. Novel data-driven technologies that can help screen, prompt, and support clinician decision-making could have a significant impact on patient outcomes. We sought to identify and summarize relevant evidence related to clinical informatics interventions in both PARDS and adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), for the second Pediatric Acute Lung Injury Consensus Conference.

DATA SOURCES

MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Elsevier), and CINAHL Complete (EBSCOhost).

STUDY SELECTION

We included studies of pediatric or adult critically ill patients with or at risk of ARDS that examined automated screening tools, electronic algorithms, or clinical decision support systems.

DATA EXTRACTION

Title/abstract review, full text review, and data extraction using a standardized data extraction form.

DATA SYNTHESIS

The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach was used to identify and summarize evidence and develop recommendations. Twenty-six studies were identified for full text extraction to address the Patient/Intervention/Comparator/Outcome questions, and 14 were used for the recommendations/statements. Two clinical recommendations were generated, related to the use of electronic screening tools and automated monitoring of compliance with best practice guidelines. Two research statements were generated, related to the development of multicenter data collaborations and the design of generalizable algorithms and electronic tools. One policy statement was generated, related to the provision of material and human resources by healthcare organizations to empower clinicians to develop clinical informatics interventions to improve the care of patients with PARDS.

CONCLUSIONS

We present two clinical recommendations and three statements (two research one policy) for the use of electronic algorithms and clinical informatics tools for patients with PARDS based on a systematic review of the literature and expert consensus.

Understanding clinical and biological heterogeneity to advance precision medicine in paediatric acute respiratory distress syndrome

Paediatric acute respiratory distress syndrome (PARDS) is a heterogeneous clinical syndrome that is associated with high rates of mortality and long-term morbidity. Factors that distinguish PARDS from adult acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) include changes in developmental stage and lung maturation with age, precipitating factors, and comorbidities. No specific treatment is available for PARDS and management is largely supportive, but methods to identify patients who would benefit from specific ventilation strategies or ancillary treatments, such as prone positioning, are needed. Understanding of the clinical and biological heterogeneity of PARDS, and of differences in clinical features and clinical course, pathobiology, response to treatment, and outcomes between PARDS and adult ARDS, will be key to the development of novel preventive and therapeutic strategies and a precision medicine approach to care. Studies in which clinical, biomarker, and transcriptomic data, as well as informatics, are used to unpack the biological and phenotypic heterogeneity of PARDS, and implementation of methods to better identify patients with PARDS, including methods to rapidly identify subphenotypes and endotypes at the point of care, will drive progress on the path to precision medicine.

Patient Cohort Identification on Time Series Data Using the OMOP Common Data Model

BACKGROUND

The identification of patient cohorts for recruiting patients into clinical trials requires an evaluation of study-specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. These criteria are specified depending on corresponding clinical facts. Some of these facts may not be present in the clinical source systems and need to be calculated either in advance or at cohort query runtime (so-called feasibility query).

OBJECTIVES

We use the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM) as the repository for our clinical data. However, Atlas, the graphical user interface of OMOP, does not offer the functionality to perform calculations on facts data. Therefore, we were in search for a different approach. The objective of this study is to investigate whether the Arden Syntax can be used for feasibility queries on the OMOP CDM to enable on-the-fly calculations at query runtime, to eliminate the need to precalculate data elements that are involved with researchers' criteria specification.

METHODS

We implemented a service that reads the facts from the OMOP repository and provides it in a form which an Arden Syntax Medical Logic Module (MLM) can process. Then, we implemented an MLM that applies the eligibility criteria to every patient data set and outputs the list of eligible cases (i.e., performs the feasibility query).

RESULTS

The study resulted in an MLM-based feasibility query that identifies cases of overventilation as an example of how an on-the-fly calculation can be realized. The algorithm is split into two MLMs to provide the reusability of the approach.

CONCLUSION

We found that MLMs are a suitable technology for feasibility queries on the OMOP CDM. Our method of performing on-the-fly calculations can be employed with any OMOP instance and without touching existing infrastructure like the Extract, Transform and Load pipeline. Therefore, we think that it is a well-suited method to perform on-the-fly calculations on OMOP.

Implementation of lung protective ventilation order to improve adherence to low tidal volume ventilation: A RE-AIM evaluation

PURPOSE

Lung protective ventilation (LPV), defined as a tidal volume (Vt) ≤8 cc/kg of predicted body weight, reduces ventilator-induced lung injury but is applied inconsistently.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We conducted a prospective, quasi-experimental, cohort study of adults mechanically ventilated admitted to intensive care units (ICU) in the year before, year after, and second year after implementation of an electronic medical record based LPV order, and a cross-sectional qualitative study of ICU providers regarding their perceptions of the order. We applied the Reach, Efficacy, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance (RE-AIM) framework to evaluate the implementation.

RESULTS

There were 1405, 1424, and 1342 in the control, adoption, and maintenance cohorts, representing 95% of mechanically ventilated adult ICU patients. The overall prevalence of LPV increased from 65% to 73% (p < 0.001, adjusted-OR for LPV adherence: 1.9, 95% CI 1.5-2.3), but LPV adherence in women was approximately 30% worse than in men (women: 44% to 56% [p < 0.001],men: 79% to 86% [p < 0.001]). ICU providers noted difficulty obtaining an accurate height measurement and mistrust of the Vt calculation as barriers to implementation. LPV adherence increased further in the second year post implementation.

CONCLUSION

We designed and implemented an LPV order that sustainably improved LPV adherence across diverse ICUs.

Mapping the Entire Record-An Alternative Approach to Data Access from Medical Logic Modules

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to describe an alternative approach for accessing electronic medical records (EMRs) from clinical decision support (CDS) functions based on Arden Syntax Medical Logic Modules, which can be paraphrased as "map the entire record."

METHODS

Based on an experimental Arden Syntax processor, we implemented a method to transform patient data from a commercial patient data management system (PDMS) to tree-structured documents termed CDS EMRs. They are encoded in a specific XML format that can be directly transformed to Arden Syntax data types by a mapper natively integrated into the processor. The internal structure of a CDS EMR reflects the tabbed view of an EMR in the graphical user interface of the PDMS.

RESULTS

The study resulted in an architecture that provides CDS EMRs in the form of a network service. The approach enables uniform data access from all Medical Logic Modules and requires no mapping parameters except a case number. Measurements within a CDS EMR can be addressed with straightforward path expressions. The approach is in routine use at a German university hospital for more than 2 years.

CONCLUSION

This practical approach facilitates the use of CDS functions in the clinical routine at our local hospital. It is transferrable to standard-compliant Arden Syntax processors with moderate effort. Its comprehensibility can also facilitate teaching and development. Moreover, it may lower the entry barrier for the application of the Arden Syntax standard and could therefore promote its dissemination.

Delayed recovery following thoracic surgery: persistent issues and potential interventions

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Lung and esophageal surgery remain a curative option for resectable cancers. However, despite advances in surgical and anesthesia practices, the inclusion of patients with comorbidities that would have previously not been offered curative resection presents additional concerns and challenges.

RECENT FINDINGS

Perioperative complication rates remain high and prolonged and/or painful recovery are common. Further, many patients face a permanent decline in their functional status, which negatively affects their quality of life. Examination of the variables associated with high complications following thoracic surgery reveals patient, physician, and institutional factors in the forefront. Anesthesiologist training, Enhanced Recovery After Surgery protocols, and preparations to minimize "failure to rescue" when a complication does arise are key strategies to address adverse outcomes.

SUMMARY

Delayed and complicated recovery after thoracic noncardiac surgery persist in current practice. This review analyzes the diverse factors that can impact complications and quality of life after lung surgery and the interventions that can help decrease length of stay and improve return to baseline conditions.