Sensor-based measurement of critical care nursing workload: Unobtrusive measures of nursing activity complement traditional task and patient level indicators of workload to predict perceived exertion.

Objective: To establish the validity of sensor-based measures of work processes for predicting perceived mental and physical exertion of critical care nurses.

Materials And Methods: Repeated measures mixed-methods study in a surgical intensive care unit. Wearable and environmental sensors captured work process data.

Towards expanding the acute care team: Learning how to involve families in care processes.

Introduction: Effective teamwork is known to be important to improving health care outcomes. Current research often highlights teamwork among health care professionals without consideration of approaches to including family as part of the health care team. In this study, the authors assess family and provider openness to expanding the care team to include family participation and introduce the Family Involvement Menu as a tool to facilitate family engagement.

Developing a Comprehensive Model of Intensive Care Unit Processes: Concept of Operations.

Objectives: This study aimed to use a systems engineering approach to improve performance and stakeholder engagement in the intensive care unit to reduce several different patient harms.

Methods: We developed a conceptual framework or concept of operations (ConOps) to analyze different types of harm that included 4 steps as follows: risk assessment, appropriate therapies, monitoring and feedback, as well as patient and family communications. This framework used a transdisciplinary approach to inventory the tasks and work flows required to eliminate 7 common types of harm experienced by patients in the intensive care unit.

Medication reconciliation: a practical tool to reduce the risk of medication errors.

Preventable adverse drug events are associated with one out of five injuries or deaths. Estimates reveal that 46% of medication errors occur on admission or discharge from a clinical unit/hospital when patient orders are written. This study was performed to reduce medication errors in patient's discharge orders through a reconciliation process in an adult surgical intensive care unit (ICU).