Reducing errors in the administration of medication with infusion pumps in the intensive care department: A lean approach.

Background: Medication errors occur frequently and may potentially harm patients. Administering medication with infusion pumps carries specific risks, which lead to incidents that affect patient safety.

Objective: Since previous attempts to reduce medication errors with infusion pumps failed in our intensive care unit, we chose the Lean approach to accomplish a 50% reduction of administration errors in 6 months.

The impact of changes in intensive care organization on patient outcome and cost-effectiveness-a narrative review.

The mortality rate of critically ill patients is high and the cost of the intensive (ICU) department is among the highest within the health-care industry. The cost will continue to increase because of the aging population in the western world. In the present review, we will discuss the impact of changes in ICU department organization on patient outcome and cost-effectiveness.

Improving patient safety in the ICU by prospective identification of missing safety barriers using the bow-tie prospective risk analysis model.

Objectives: To improve patient safety, potential critical events should be analyzed for the existence of preventive barriers. The aim of this study was to prospectively identify existing and missing barriers using the Bow-Tie model. We expected that the analysis of these barriers would lead to feasible recommendations to improve safety in daily patient care.