Contributions to Critical Care from Psychological Science and Practice

2021 ◽  
pp. 58-100
Author(s):  
Nancy Merbitz ◽  
Joan Fleishman ◽  
Hannah Kamsky ◽  
Stephanie Sundborg ◽  
Jamie Lynne Tingey ◽  
...  

In this chapter we highlight findings and practices from Psychology that can be applied to mitigate the impact of critical illness and the ICU environment on patients, families and staff. The substantial accumulating evidence for detrimental health effects of traumatic stress is highly relevant for the care of patients on the ICU, who are potentially traumatized by the experience and who may bring a history of trauma with them. The fields of trauma psychology and rehabilitation psychology share foundational principles to guide patient-centered and systemic changes to ICU care, and these principles guided our selection and presentation of material. Our discussion of how to implement these principles within a healthcare system is informed by selected findings from social, organizational and behavioral psychology, which also are summarized.

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 232-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Desiree E. Kosmisky ◽  
Sonia S. Everhart ◽  
Carrie L. Griffiths

Purpose: A review of the implementation and development of telepharmacy services that ensure access to a critical care-trained pharmacist across a healthcare system. Summary: Teleintensive care unit (tele-ICU) services use audio, video, and electronic databases to assist bedside caregivers. Telepharmacy, as defined by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, is a method in which a pharmacist uses telecommunication technology to oversee aspects of pharmacy operations or provide patient care services. Telepharmacists can ensure accurate and timely order verification, recommend interventions to improve patient care, provide drug information to clinicians, assist in standardization of care, and promote medication safety. This tele-ICU pharmacy team is one of the only entirely clinical-based tele-ICU pharmacy models among the tele-ICU programs across the United States. The use of technology for customized alert generation and intervention proposal with medication orders and chart notation are unique. In a 34-month period from September 2015 to July 2018, more than 110 000 alerts were generated and 13 000 interventions were performed by telepharmacists. Conclusions: Tele-ICU pharmacists employ limited resources to provide critical care pharmacy expertise to multiple sites within a healthcare system during nontraditional hours with documented clinical and financial benefits. Further study is needed to determine the impact of tele-ICU pharmacists on ICU and hospital length of stay, morbidity, and mortality.


Author(s):  
Claire Colebourn ◽  
Jim Newton

This chapter describes the pathophysiology and methods of assessment of valve lesions affecting the aortic and mitral valves. It describes the management of these valve lesions in the critical care setting and guides decision-making about the impact of the valve lesion on the critical illness. The diagnosis and management of infective endocarditis are described in detail.


Author(s):  
Bruce Andrew Cooper

Patients with critical illness often have renal dysfunction, either primary or secondary, that can both complicate and prolong their medical management. Therefore, an understanding of normal renal physiology can help recognize the process or processes that caused the renal dysfunction, and determine the most appropriate corrective and supportive care. The kidney has many important roles other than just urine production. The impact of kidney disease is often predictable. The kidney plays a critical role in fluid and electrolyte balance via many specialized transmembrane pathways. The kidney is also involved in the production and modification of two key hormones and one enzyme. Understanding normal renal physiology can help determine clinical management.This chapter summarizes the important aspects of renal physiology relevant to those who work in a critical care environment.


BMJ Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. e036096 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Adrion ◽  
Bjoern Weiss ◽  
Nicolas Paul ◽  
Elke Berger ◽  
Reinhard Busse ◽  
...  

IntroductionSurvival after critical illness has noticeably improved over the last decades due to advances in critical care medicine. Besides, there is an increasing number of elderly patients with chronic diseases being treated in the intensive care unit (ICU). More than half of the survivors of critical illness suffer from medium-term or long-term cognitive, psychological and/or physical impairments after ICU discharge, which is recognised as post-intensive care syndrome (PICS). There are evidence-based and consensus-based quality indicators (QIs) in intensive care medicine, which have a positive influence on patients’ long-term outcomes if adhered to.Methods and analysisThe protocol of a multicentre, pragmatic, stepped wedge cluster randomised controlled, quality improvement trial is presented. During 3 predefined steps, 12 academic hospitals in Berlin and Brandenburg, Germany, are randomly selected to move in a one-way crossover from the control to the intervention condition. After a multifactorial training programme on QIs and clinical outcomes for site personnel, ICUs will receive an adapted, interprofessional protocol for a complex telehealth intervention comprising of daily telemedical rounds at ICU. The targeted sample size is 1431 patients. The primary objective of this trial is to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention on the adherence to eight QIs daily measured during the patient’s ICU stay, compared with standard of care. Furthermore, the impact on long-term recovery such as PICS-related, patient-centred outcomes including health-related quality of life, mental health, clinical assessments of cognition and physical function, all-cause mortality and cost-effectiveness 3 and 6 months after ICU discharge will be evaluated.Ethics and disseminationThis protocol was approved by the ethics committee of the Charité—Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany (EA1/006/18). The results will be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal and presented at international conferences. Study findings will also be disseminated via the website (www.eric-projekt.net).Trial registration numberClinicalTrials.gov Registry (NCT03671447).


Vaccines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Yahya S. Alqahtani

Vaccines afford protection against infectious diseases. However, a sizeable part of the population refuse vaccinations and continue to dispute the evidence supporting vaccinations. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of COVID-19 vaccination uptake and its determinants among the Saudi population in the southern region of Saudi Arabia. A cross-sectional survey studied COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in adults in Saudi Arabia, targeting the general population in the southwestern region. Data were collected through an online survey questionnaire tool. All data were analysed using SPSS version 23.0. The majority (57.29%) of the participants were willing to receive the new COVID-19 vaccine, whereas almost 64% believed it is necessary to take the COVID-19 vaccine to protect oneself and that the vaccine is safe, efficient and effective. The data showed that perceived risk of COVID-19 (p = 0.015), history of previous vaccination against seasonal influenza (p = 0.000), and trust in the healthcare system (p = 0.025) were significant predictors for COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. We conclude that participants’ trust in the healthcare system, perceived risk of contracting COVID-19, and history of previous vaccination against seasonal influenza were significant predictors for COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Knowing the acceptance rates for the COVID-19 vaccination can aid state agencies, medical practitioners, and other entities in reducing the impact of vaccine avoidance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-410
Author(s):  
A. Khujanazarov ◽  
Sh. Allamuratov

The article is devoted to the history of medicine in our country, as well as to questions and solutions. Analyzing, for example, how the health care system has taken into account the impact of reforms over the past four years.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Roimi ◽  
Rom Gutman ◽  
Jonathan Somer ◽  
Asaf Ben Arie ◽  
Ido Calman ◽  
...  

Background: The spread of COVID-19 has led to a severe strain on hospital capacity in many countries. There is a need for a model to help planners assess expected COVID-19 hospital resource utilization. Methods: Retrospective nationwide cohort study following the day-by-day clinical status of all hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Israel from March 1st to May 2nd, 2020. Patient clinical course was modelled with a machine learning approach based on a set of multistate Cox regression-based mod- els with adjustments for right censoring, recurrent events, competing events, left truncation, and time-dependent covariates. The model predicts the patient's entire disease course in terms of clinical states, from which we derive the patient's hospital length-of-stay, length-of-stay in critical state, the risk of in-hospital mortality, and total and critical care hospital-bed utilization. Accuracy assessed over eight cross-validation cohorts of size 330, using per-day Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of predicted hospital utilization averaged over 64 days; and area under the receiver operating characteristics (AUROC) for individual risk of critical illness and in-hospital mortality, assessed on the first day of hospitalization. We present predicted hospital utilization under hypothetical incoming patient scenarios. Findings: During the study period, 2,703 confirmed COVID-19 patients were hospitalized in Israel. The per-day MAEs for total and critical-care hospital- bed utilization, were 4.72 ± 1.07 and 1.68 ± 0.40 respectively; the AUROCs for prediction of the probabilities of critical illness and in-hospital mortality were 0.88 ± 0.04 and 0.96 ± 0.04, respectively. We further present the impact of several scenarios of patient influx on healthcare system utilization, and provide an R software package for predicting hospital-bed utilization. Interpretation: We developed a model that, given basic easily obtained data as input, accurately predicts total and critical care hospital utilization. The model enables evaluating the impact of various patient influx scenarios on hospital utilization and planning ahead of hospital resource allocation.


Crisis ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 265-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meshan Lehmann ◽  
Matthew R. Hilimire ◽  
Lawrence H. Yang ◽  
Bruce G. Link ◽  
Jordan E. DeVylder

Abstract. Background: Self-esteem is a major contributor to risk for repeated suicide attempts. Prior research has shown that awareness of stigma is associated with reduced self-esteem among people with mental illness. No prior studies have examined the association between self-esteem and stereotype awareness among individuals with past suicide attempts. Aims: To understand the relationship between stereotype awareness and self-esteem among young adults who have and have not attempted suicide. Method: Computerized surveys were administered to college students (N = 637). Linear regression analyses were used to test associations between self-esteem and stereotype awareness, attempt history, and their interaction. Results: There was a significant stereotype awareness by attempt interaction (β = –.74, p = .006) in the regression analysis. The interaction was explained by a stronger negative association between stereotype awareness and self-esteem among individuals with past suicide attempts (β = –.50, p = .013) compared with those without attempts (β = –.09, p = .037). Conclusion: Stigma is associated with lower self-esteem within this high-functioning sample of young adults with histories of suicide attempts. Alleviating the impact of stigma at the individual (clinical) or community (public health) levels may improve self-esteem among this high-risk population, which could potentially influence subsequent suicide risk.


Author(s):  
C. Claire Thomson

This chapter traces the early history of state-sponsored informational filmmaking in Denmark, emphasising its organisation as a ‘cooperative’ of organisations and government agencies. After an account of the establishment and early development of the agency Dansk Kulturfilm in the 1930s, the chapter considers two of its earliest productions, both process films documenting the manufacture of bricks and meat products. The broader context of documentary in Denmark is fleshed out with an account of the production and reception of Poul Henningsen’s seminal film Danmark (1935), and the international context is accounted for with an overview of the development of state-supported filmmaking in the UK, Italy and Germany. Developments in the funding and output of Dansk Kulturfilm up to World War II are outlined, followed by an account of the impact of the German Occupation of Denmark on domestic informational film. The establishment of the Danish Government Film Committee or Ministeriernes Filmudvalg kick-started aprofessionalisation of state-sponsored filmmaking, and two wartime public information films are briefly analysed as examples of its early output. The chapter concludes with an account of the relations between the Danish Resistance and an emerging generation of documentarists.


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