Patient Safety and Collaboration of the Intensive Care Unit Team

Patient safety in the ICU and collaboration among ICU care providers are interconnected.

Safe delivery of patient care has been in the spotlight since the release of the Institute of Medicine’s report,^1,To Err Is Human, which attributed 44000 to 88000 preventable deaths in hospitals to medical errors in 1997. More recently, HealthGrades² reported that from 2004 through 2006, an estimated 238337 deaths were due to potentially avoidable patient safety incidents. Serious medical errors with the potential for causing harm or that actually cause harm are common in critical care areas. One estimate is that 148000 life-threatening serious errors (both intercepted and nonintercepted) occur in critical care areas of teaching hospitals annually.³ Incidents due to error occur commonly during the ordering or administration of medications used for treatment, when communicating clinical information, and as a result of failure to follow protocols such as washing hands before...