[The checklists: A help or a hassle?].

Patient safety has become a central component of quality of care. One of the best known and most widely used security tool in all work settings is the checklist. The checklist is a tool that helps to not forget any step during the performance of a procedure, to do tasks with an established order, to control the fulfilment of a series of requirements or to collect data in a systematic way for its subsequent analysis.

[Prevention of bed sores; results of a program in intensive pediatrics treatment].

The difficulty to keep our patients' skin intact combined with few articles on this topic in pediatrics led the authors to carry out a study in their Pediatrics Intensive Care Unit "UCIP" at the Central University Hospital of Asturias, HUCA. The objective of this study consisted in determining if a decrease in the appearance of bed sores in children checked into their unit after a program whose purpose was to prevent bed sores had been applied occurred. This retrospective/prospective, comparative, observational study dealt with patients checked in their UCIP from September 2004 to September 2007; patients were broken into two groups, before and after applying a protocol and comparing the following variables: the number of patients checked in during each of the periods of this study; patients who had bed sores; average time kept in this ward for each group; pathologies patients who suffered from bed sores had when checked into this ward; the site and degree of these bed sores.