Impact of a Nurse Implemented Sedation and Analgesia Algorithm in Surgical Intensive Care Unit

Sedation

To show that the nurse implementation of a sedation and analgesia algorithm is beneficial to the patient in terms of sedative drugs reduction and thus overall decrease in duration of mechanical ventilation and the morbidity and mortality which is associated with it, without altering patient comfort and tolerance of the environment. This, compared to the less frequent assessments by doctors and thus regular adjustments during the day as opposed to a fixed drug dose.

Outcome Measures : The primary objective of this non-invasive, non-interventional study is to show that the establishment of a titration algorithm for sedation and analgesia administered by nurses is more beneficial to the patient than the use of such a drug without a suitable regimen. The goal is to improve the quality of our painkillers and sedative drugs use needed in the intensive care environment in order to decrease the morbidity and mortality associated with it, without altering patient comfort and tolerance to the environment. For this we propose to collect a database including patient demographic details, pharmacological information and any possible complications during the ICU stay as well as a distant assessment exploring the psychological complications (3, 6 months and 1 year). The primary endpoint will be the duration of mechanical ventilation, and secondary endpoints, the length of stay in ICU and in hospital, mortality and other complications. Methods: The two study populations will be in two distinct time periods, the first so-called control without any modification of practices, and the second, by introducing the algorithm with the same drugs being used. Quantitative comparisons of data following a normal distribution will be done using a Student's t test. Otherwise quantitative data will be compared using a Mann-Whitney test or Wilcoxon. The comparison of qualitative data will be done using a Fisher exact test. To increase the power of this before / after study, we calculated the number of patients to be included by period, based on the reduction in duration of mechanical ventilation with such protocols in the literature, and the mean duration of mechanical ventilation in our unit before the study.

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