Quality of Care
The available data suggests a relation between ICU volume and quality of care for mechanically ventilated patients. After adjustment for severity of illnesses, demographic variables, and characteristics of different ICUs (including staffing by intensivists), higher ICU staffing was significantly associated with lower ICU and hospital mortality rates. A ratio of 2 patients to 1 nurse is recommended for a medical ICU, which contrasts to the ratio of 4:1 or 5:1 typically seen on medical floors. This varies from country to country, though; e.g., in Australia and the United Kingdom most ICUs are staffed on a 2:1 basis (for High-Dependency patients who require closer monitoring or more intensive treatment than a hospital ward can offer) or on a 1:1 basis for patients requiring very intensive support and monitoring; for example, a patient on a mechanical ventilator with associated anaesthetics or sedation such as propofol, Midazolam and use of strong analgesics such as morphine, fentanyl and/or remifentanil.
Read more about this topic: Intensive-care Unit
Famous quotes containing the words quality of, quality and/or care:
“The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
“Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the otherest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I am not sure how many “sins” I would recognize in the world. Some would surely be defused by changed circumstances. But I can imagine none that is more irredeemably sinful than the betrayal, the exploitation, of the young by those who should care for them.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)