Interdisciplinary Rounds in the Intensive Care Unit

Interdisciplinary rounds (IDRs) in the intensive care unit (ICU) are increasingly recommended to support quality improvement and to reduce preventable patient harm and conflicts. However, there are no evidenced based studies available about how to perform these rounds in an optimal way. Therefore, the authors developed, validated, and applied a scoring instrument (the IDR Assessment Scale) with quality indicators to assess the quality of IDRs in ICUs. In order to improve the quality of IDRs, the authors developed a leadership training for the leading physicians during rounds. The training consists of a 1-day training session in a simulation environment and workplace-based feedback sessions. The 10 essential quality indicators (which were derived from the validated IDR Assessment Scale) were used as a checklist. This leadership training improved the quality of the performed IDRs in the ICUs. This book describes our IDR Assessment Scale (including the manual), the 10-items-checklist and leadership training (including the training scenario). The aim of this book is to support ICU care professionals and ICU-managers for the ultimate goal of improved safety of patient care.