CA24107 - Patient SAFety Related Outcome Measures in European ICUs (SAFE-ICU)

The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is a complex environment, where nurses are trained to deliver highly specialized care to critically ill patients. The ICU is a rapidly changing environment with new treatments and interventions emerging. However, despite advancements in care practices and treatment protocols, there remains significant variability in patient safety related outcomes. The World Health Organisation estimates that 1 in 10 patients are harmed in healthcare settings and that as many as 80% of these harms are avoidable. 

Nurses are active participants in preventing and reducing the incidence of avoidable harms. Pressure ulcers, healthcare-associated infections (HCAI), and delirium are some of the most frequently cited patient safety related outcomes in the ICU. However, there are inconsistencies in how these outcomes are measured across the world. Future efforts are needed to standardise and harmonise how we measure these outcomes across European countries and to identify factors that contribute to their prevention which would guide preventative care strategies. If these outcomes were measured in the same way across countries, this would facilitate further research with the aim of reducing the incidence of these avoidable harms and therefore enhancing the quality of patient care in ICUs. This network will work towards advancing patient safety through standardised measurement of three patient safety outcome measures (pressure ulcers, HCAIs and delirium). The processes that contribute to the development of these outcomes will also be explored. This network will enable larger scale research studies of groundbreaking interventions to reduce the incidence of these avoidable harms.