Daily Checklists and Outcome in the Intensive Care Unit

Critical Illness Clinical Trial

Official title: Daily Checklists and Outcome in the Intensive Care Unit

Status Completed

Clinical Trial Summary

Medical errors account for tens of thousands of deaths and tens of billions of dollars in healthcare costs in the United States every year. One field that has seen the strongest push toward quality improvement has been critical care medicine, likely because its particularly high degree of medical complexity makes it a practice area prone to high error rates with serious consequences. One of the most commonly used interventions used to help reduce errors in the intensive care unit (ICU) has been the implementation of checklists.

The investigators propose a clinical trial in a University critical care setting to determine whether an electronic checklist versus verbal prompting to use a written checklist improves clinical practice and patient outcomes. The investigators also plan to compare these data with a time period prior to the study to determine if the electronic checklist or verbal prompting are better than usual care. The investigators hypothesize that both the electronic checklist and verbal prompting to use a written checklist will be better for clinical practice and patient outcomes than usual care, and that verbal prompting will lead to better outcomes compared to the electronic checklist.

Clinical Trial Description

n/a

Study Design

Allocation: Non-Randomized, Endpoint Classification: Efficacy Study, Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment, Masking: Single Blind (Subject), Primary Purpose: Health Services Research

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Critical Illness

• NCT number: NCT01396044
• Study type: Interventional
• Source: Northwestern University
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: July 2011
• Completion date: April 2012