Two BC Patient Safety Awards

The ICU team at Vancouver Acute received the 2007 Patient Safety Excellence Award for "Improving quality of sedation in ICU" initiative
Over-sedation causes delays in the awakening and weaning of ICU patients from mechanical ventilation, leading to longer stays in the ICU and more potential complications such as ventilator acquired pneumonia (VAP) and feeding intolerance.

The researchers, together with a team of nurses from the VGH ICU, developed the Vancouver Interaction and Calmness Scale (VICS), a sedation scale, one of the first sedation scales to be shown to work. VICS achieved a 2.5 day reduction in time required for patients on mechanical ventilation and a two-day reduction in length of time in ICU.  The Society of Critical Care Medicine has recommended VICS be used by all ICUs to patients received the medication they needed to reduce potential complications associated with over sedation. The results have been presented in abstract form at the Society of Critical Care Conference San Francisco 2006 and the manuscript will be submitted to the journal Critical Care Medicine.

Dr. John Shepherd is recipient of the 2007 BC Patient Safety Leadership Award.  Dr. Shepherd has contributed his patient safety expertise within VCH and with multiple other organizations including the Patient Safety Task Force and the Canadian Patient Safety Institute where he sat on Education Advisory Councils.