Pandemics and the large-scale outbreak of infectious disease can significantly impact morbidity and mortality worldwide. The impact on intensive care resources can be significant and often require ...modification of service delivery, a key element which includes rapid expansion of the critical care workforce. Pandemics are also unpredictable, which necessitates rapid decision-making and action which, in the lack of experience and guidance, may be extremely challenging. Recognising the potential strain on intensive care units (ICUs), particularly on staffing, a working group was formed for the purpose of developing recommendations to support decision-making during rapid service expansion.
The Critical Care Pandemic Staffing Working Party (n = 21), representing nursing, allied health, and medical disciplines, has used a modified consensus approach to provide recommendations to inform multidisciplinary workforce capacity expansion planning in critical care.
A total of 60 recommendations have been proposed which reflect general recommendations as well as those specific to maintaining the critical care workforce, expanding the critical care workforce, rostering and allocation of the critical care workforce, nurse-specific recommendations for staffing the ICU, education support and training during ICU surge situations, workforce support, models of care, and de-escalation.
These recommendations are provided with the intent that they be used to guide interdisciplinary decision-making, and we suggest that careful consideration is given to the local context to determine which recommendations are most appropriate to implement and how they are prioritised. Ongoing evaluation of recommendation implementation and impact will be necessary, particularly in rapidly changing clinical contexts.
Workplace safety culture is a crucial ingredient in patients' outcomes and is increasingly being explored as a guide for quality improvement efforts.
To establish a baseline understanding of the ...safety culture in Australian intensive care units.
In a nationwide study of physicians and nurses in 10 Australian intensive care units, the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire intensive care unit version was used to measure safety culture. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the mean scores for the 6 subscales of the questionnaire, and generalized-estimation-equations models were used to test the hypotheses that safety culture differed between physicians and nurses and between nurse leaders and bedside nurses.
A total of 672 responses (50.6% response rate) were received: 513 (76.3%) from nurses, 89 (13.2%) from physicians, and 70 (10.4%) from respondents who did not specify their professional group. Ratings were highest for teamwork climate and lowest for perceptions of hospital management and working conditions. Four subscales, job satisfaction, teamwork climate, safety climate, and working conditions, were rated significantly higher by physicians than by nurses. Two subscales, working conditions and perceptions of hospital management, were rated significantly lower by nurse leaders than by bedside nurses.
Measuring the baseline safety culture of an intensive care unit allows leaders to implement targeted strategies to improve specific dimensions of safety culture. These strategies ultimately may improve the working conditions of staff and the care that patients receive.
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