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Primary Intensivists and Primary Nurses to Decrease Pediatric ICU Length of Stay (PIPRNs)

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Columbia University

Status

Completed

Conditions

ICU Length of Stay

Treatments

Behavioral: Primary intensivist and nurses

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT03364933
AAAR5445

Details and patient eligibility

About

This is a randomized control trial of PICU patients admitted for 7 days and expected to remain for at least another 3 days and who have a complex chronic condition. Patients will be randomized to usual care or usual care plus a primary intensivist and group of primary nurses (to facilitate passing of important patient information and informed, expedited decision-making). The primary research question is whether having a primary intensivist and nurses decreases PICU length of stay.

Full description

Long-stay intensive care unit (ICU) patients, or children who require prolonged hospitalization in the pediatric ICU (PICU), represent a minority of PICU patients but have a disproportionate impact on hospital resources and unfavorable outcomes, including morbidity, mortality, and repeated critical illness. These patients and their families have multifaceted needs (eg, tailored communication) that pose unique challenges to PICU providers and the parent-provider relationship. These experiences and needs are compounded and complicated by the transitory care that is typically provided by PICU. This transitory care may contribute to 1) patient/family dissatisfaction; 2) ineffective passing of important information day to day and week to week; and 3) delayed decision-making. These latter two potential consequences may, in turn, contribute to prolonged length of stay (LOS).

For these reasons, the investigators propose a randomized control trial to test whether primary intensivists and primary nurses can decrease PICU LOS for long-stay patients. A primary intensivist is one that remains a consistent physician-presence for the patient/family and PICU team throughout the child's PICU stay, despite changes in the intensivist(s) who orchestrates day-to-day management. Primary nurses are a team of PICU nurses who provide the all/most of the bedside care to the child. The investigators hypothesize that the long-stay PICU patients who are randomized to receive primary intensivists and nurses will have a statistically lower LOS than those patients who do not.

Enrollment

200 patients

Sex

All

Volunteers

No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

  • PICU patients of any age who

    • have a complex chronic condition
    • have been admitted to the PICU for one week and are predicted by the PICU attending to continue to be admitted for at least another 3 days.

Exclusion criteria

Trial design

Primary purpose

Health Services Research

Allocation

Randomized

Interventional model

Parallel Assignment

Masking

Single Blind

200 participants in 2 patient groups

Primary intensivist and nurses
Experimental group
Description:
Patients randomized to the experimental arm will have a primary intensivist and a team of primary nurses assigned to them.
Treatment:
Behavioral: Primary intensivist and nurses
Control
No Intervention group
Description:
Patients who are randomized to the control group will receive usual care and not be assigned a primary intensivist or nurses.

Trial contacts and locations

1

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Data sourced from clinicaltrials.gov

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