The Canadian ICU Collaborative and Safer Healthcare Now! invite interested teams from intensive care units to participate in a 12-month Breakthrough Series Collaborative to work on one or both of the following aims:

• Improve care for critically ill patients through implementation of standardized screening tools and prevention and management strategies for delirium
•   Reduce avoidable adverse drug events for critically ill patients by following a medication reconciliation process.

Accreditation Canada has included both topics in its accreditation process in Standard 9.8 and Required Organizational Practice (ROP) 7.4 and 11.5.

The Challenge

Delirium and adverse drug events can have a significant impact on a patient’s life.  There is a wealth of research in improving the care of critically ill patients with delirium and on how to prevent adverse drug events.   However, healthcare does not always reliably transfer evidence into practice and processes frequently fail despite the best intentions of a dedicated and highly skilled workforce. Our system, which intends to heal, often does just the opposite, leading to unintended harm for patients.  

A Solution

Collaboratives have been known help close the gap between what we know and what we do.  A Collaborative brings together teams that share a commitment to making significant and rapid changes to achieve results because it has the structure, topic expertise and proven methods to create lasting improvement.  Participants attend three learning sessions (two virtual sessions plus one face-to-face session) and are supported by expert faculty between sessions. Participation in this Collaborative can contribute to the achievement of your delirium and medication reconciliation goals.

Who Should Enrol?

This initiative is open to all inter-professional teams in the intensive care unit.  In addition, teams that enroll must have senior leadership support, willingness to rapidly test and implement local solutions, prefer structure and focused deadlines, actively share learning and data with other teams and have the ability and financial resources for a partial team to travel to a face-to-face learning session in February.

How do I get more information?

The Delirium and Medication Collaborative has been deferred until January 2012.  Registration deadline is December 16, 2011. 

An Information Session is being held on Wednesday, November 30th at 10:00 MT/12:00 ET

Download the Call to Action in English or French. 

Contact Ardis Eliason, Project Coordinator at aeliason@telus.net for an Enrolment Package that will provide additional information.