Grant: Project Grant

Lung failure prevents the lungs from delivering adequate amounts of oxygen to the body. It can be caused by severe infections such as pneumonia and is a common reason for patients to be admitted to the intensive care unit. Patients with lung failure often require assisted breathing with a machine. Some patients develop very severe lung failure, referred to as the Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). More than half of patients with severe ARDS will die. Thus diagnosing and treating ARDS correctly is very important. Several treatments for ARDS have been shown to improve a patient's chance of survival. Using the breathing machine carefully (protectively with small breaths), using medications to help relax the chest muscles, and prone positioning (nursing patients while they are lying face down) are all treatments that can save lives. When our team and others have studied how well we use these therapies, we have shown that we do not use these treatments as often as we should. It is likely that we could be helping more patients. The goal of this project is to test a simple but organized approach to diagnosing and treating lung failure. To create the best chance for success, many different types of care providers including physicians, nurses and respiratory therapists will be involved. The approach will focus on timely diagnosis as well as using those treatments that have been proven to save lives. We will look at outcomes in patients (how often are they receiving the correct treatment), health care providers such as nurses, physicians and respiratory therapists (how they like using the pathway), families (does the pathway improve the ICU experience), and cost (does the pathway reduce unnecessary treatments). Our goal is to ensure that patients with lung failure and ARDS patients are diagnosed quickly and provided with the correct therapy at the correct time to best improve their outcomes.