Current Issues in Critical Care
Northern Region BACCN 13th of November 2009
There are many issues currently occupying the minds of critical care nurses this winter. In response to this the Northern Region committee hosted a study day earlier this month to update nurses on some of these contemporary issues.
The BACCN in conjunction with the Royal College of Nursing Critical Care Forum and the Critical Care Networks National Nurse Leads recently published joint Standards for Staffing in Critical Care. Vanessa Gibson, Senior Lecturer in Critical Care at Northumbria University and Professional Advisor for the BACCN presented an overview of the standards which were well received by the audience. Although the document is a lengthy review of the evidence the central tenet of patient safety remains the same. Every patient in a Critical Care Unit must have immediate access to a registered nurse with a post registration qualification. Whilst there is an emphasis on working flexibly, ventilated patients should have a minimum of one nurse to one patient and the nurse patient ratio within any Critical Care Unit should not go below one nurse to two patients. The full document will be available soon on the BACCN website.
Dr. Greaves, Consultant Anaesthetist in Newcastle and Jane Greaves, Senior Lecturer at Northumbria University gave a very interesting talk on LEAN working in critical care. This is a Japanese concept which aims to organise the work place and cut out waste so that staff work more efficiently. The value in this concept is self evident but changing culture may present some difficulties!
Lesley Durham who is the North East and Cumbria Critical Care Network Manager gave a very useful presentation regarding the flu pandemic. This included the strategic planning she had been involved in with the health authority and the local level of flu alert. It was useful to know where levels are at in the North East and what else we can expect if things get worse.
Annette Richardson who is a Consultant Nurse in Critical Care in Newcastle and works for the NSPA presented the work on the Matching Michigan Project. This project is about interventions used to decrease central venous catheter related bloodstream infection. She gave a very thought provoking presentation on current infection rates and what can be done to reduce them. This work is being piloted in the North East and then being rolled out to the rest of the country. In previously published work ICUs in Michigan managed to reduce the CVC infection rates from 7.7 at baseline to 1.4. This is a very important piece of work which has major implications for patient safety and outcome.
Finally Louise Burn who is Head of Service Improvement and Reform for NHS South of Tyne and Wear demystified the processes of commissioning critical care services. This is perhaps not an issue most critical care nurses give much thought to but Louise outlined how commissioning of services should work and some of the inherent problems in commissioning critical care services.
We enjoyed a very successful afternoon. The event evaluated very well, especially the multi-disciplinary programme. This was a very useful study event which covered a number of important areas and other regions may wish to organise something similar.
Vanessa Gibson
Secretary Northern Region BACCN
