Publications by authors named "John Litell"

Article Synopsis
  • Emergency departments face significant risks for medical errors, prompting the development of a comprehensive ED Safety Checklist aimed at enhancing patient outcomes across various international settings.* -
  • The checklist was created through a modified Delphi consensus process involving experts from 34 countries, with initial items gathered from a systematic review, followed by rounds of evaluation to reach an 80% agreement for inclusion.* -
  • The final checklist consists of 86 items, which include a general ED Safety Checklist and five domain-specific checklists that focus on critical areas of care, improving communication, and preventing medical errors in emergency settings.*
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Unlabelled: Initial Society of Critical Care Medicine Discovery Viral Infection and Respiratory illness Universal Study (VIRUS) Registry analysis suggested that improvements in critical care processes offered the greatest modifiable opportunity to improve critically ill COVID-19 patient outcomes.

Objectives: The Structured Team-based Optimal Patient-Centered Care for Virus COVID-19 ICU Collaborative was created to identify and speed implementation of best evidence based COVID-19 practices.

Design Setting And Participants: This 6-month project included volunteer interprofessional teams from VIRUS Registry sites, who received online training on the Checklist for Early Recognition and Treatment of Acute Illness and iNjury approach, a structured and systematic method for delivering evidence based critical care.

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Digital twin technology is a virtual depiction of a physical product and has been utilized in many fields. Digital twin patient model in healthcare is a virtual patient that provides opportunities to test the outcomes of various interventions virtually without subjecting an actual patient to possible harm. This can serve as a decision aid in the complex environment of the intensive care unit (ICU).

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Introduction: Digital twins, a form of artificial intelligence, are virtual representations of the physical world. In the past 20 years, digital twins have been utilized to track wind turbines' operations, monitor spacecraft's status, and even create a model of the Earth for climate research. While digital twins hold much promise for the neurocritical care unit, the question remains on how to best establish the rules that govern these models.

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Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) due to COVID-19 leads to a high rate of mortality in the intensive care unit (ICU). A lung-protective mechanical ventilation strategy using low tidal volumes is a cornerstone to management, but uncontrolled hypercapnia is a life-threatening consequence among severe cases. A mechanism to prevent progressive hypercapnia may offset hemodynamic instability among patients who develop hypercapnia.

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Objectives: Effective sepsis resuscitation depends on useful criteria for prompt identification of eligible patients. These criteria should reliably predict a discharge diagnosis of sepsis, ensuring that interventions are triggered for those who need it while avoiding potentially harmful interventions in those who do not. We sought to determine the proportion of patients meeting sepsis criteria in the emergency department (ED) that was ultimately diagnosed with sepsis and to quantify the subset of nonseptic patients with risk factors for harm from fluid resuscitation.

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Objectives: To assess trends in the use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation for poisoning in the United States.

Design: Retrospective cohort study.

Setting: The National Poison Data System, the databased owned and managed by the American Association of Poison Control Centers, the organization that supports and accredits all 55 U.

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Health systems confronting the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic must plan for surges in ICU demand and equitably distribute resources to maximize benefit for critically ill patients and the public during periods of resource scarcity. For example, morbidity and mortality could be mitigated by a proactive regional plan for the triage of mechanical ventilators. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a resource-intensive and potentially life-saving modality in severe respiratory failure, has generally not been included in proactive disaster preparedness until recently.

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Purpose: To determine whether resident abdominopelvic CT reports considered prospectively concordant with the final interpretation are also considered concordant by other blinded specialists and abdominal radiologists.

Methods: In this institutional review board-approved retrospective cohort study, 119 randomly selected urgent abdominopelvic CT examinations with a resident preliminary report deemed prospectively "concordant" by the signing faculty were identified. Nine blinded specialists from Emergency Medicine, Internal Medicine, and Abdominal Radiology reviewed the preliminary and final reports and scored the preliminary report with respect to urgent findings as follows: 1.

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Objective: To determine if a video depicting cardiopulmonary resuscitation and resuscitation preference options would improve knowledge and decision making among patients and surrogates in the ICU.

Design: Randomized, unblinded trial.

Setting: Single medical ICU.

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Background: Shared-decision-making about resuscitation goals of care for intensive care unit (ICU) patients depends on a basic understanding of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Our objective was to develop and validate a survey to assess comprehension of CPR among ICU patients and surrogate decision-makers.

Methods: We developed a 12-item verbally-administered survey incorporating input from patients, clinicians, and expert focus groups.

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Objective: Acute respiratory distress syndrome is a common complication of critical illness, with high mortality and limited treatment options. Preliminary studies suggest that potentially preventable hospital exposures contribute to acute respiratory distress syndrome development. We aimed to determine the association between specific hospital exposures and the rate of acute respiratory distress syndrome development among at-risk patients.

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The translation of knowledge into rational care is as essential and pressing a task as the development of new diagnostic or therapeutic devices, and is arguably more important. The emerging science of health care delivery has identified the central role of human factor ergonomics in the prevention of medical error, omission, and waste. Novel informatics and systems engineering strategies provide an excellent opportunity to improve the design of acute care delivery.

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Acute lung injury affects a subset of hospitalized patients but is not universal. This syndrome can substantially delay ventilator liberation, prolong intensive care unit (ICU) stay, and increase mortality. As with many critical illness syndromes, the available treatment options are limited in number and impact.

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