Working group on Quality Improvement

The Working Group on Quality Improvement started its activities more than 10 years ago. The immediate motivation was that European intensivists increasingly realised that serious reflection on the quality of their work was a task they would inevitably face in the future. In general, the working group is focused on developing and evaluating tools for quality assurance and teaching quality management skills to the intensivists.

 

The Working Group on Quality Improvement recently focused very much on the issue of patient safety in intensive care medicine and performed two widely recognized multinational studies. The results of these studies were published as follows:

During the last year, the Working Group on Quality Improvement dedicated its efforts to the writing of a paper on “Recommendations on basic requirements for Intensive Care Units – structural and organisational aspects”. The paper has the aim to provide a guide for the planning of either a new ICU or the redesign of an already existing ICU, as well as to recommend basic standards and targets for the organisation of ICUs. In some parts this paper is an update of the work of an ESICM group of experts from 1996, published by Patrick Ferdinande. The recent paper will become a reference used by ICUs all around the world and the ESICM WG on Quality Improvement has again proofed its potential to execute important projects.

 

The minutes of the Section meeting held in Lisbon are available here.

The minutes of the Section meeting held in Brussels on 9th of March 2010 are available here.

The minutes of the Section meeting held in Barcelona on 12th of October 2010 are available here.

The minutes of the Section meeting held in Brussels on 22nd of March 2011 are available here.

The minutes of the Section meeting held in Berlin on 3rd of October 2011 are available here.