A Celebration of Critical Care 


Celebrating National Critical Care Awareness and Recognition Month (NCCARM) has resulted in tremendous payouts in terms of camaraderie and pride for critical care professionals and has helped send a strong message to the public about the importance of this demanding, life-saving practice. Critical care team members who celebrated with events both large and small last year agreed that it is worth the effort and are looking forward to bringing the team together again.

Now is the time to start preparing for NCCARM May 2007, and many planners are aspiring to “supersize” last year’s endeavors or bring celebrations to their hospitals for the first time. Last May, at Health First in Florida, NCCARM activities spanned the course of a week and included all three hospitals in the organization: Holmes Regional Medical Center, Cape Canaveral Hospital and Palm Bay Community Hospital. Events kicked off on May 12 with several events geared at educating critical care professionals. Lectures were presented on emotional intelligence, healthcare change and creating healthy work environments, and a conference was held on trauma services. The hospitals displayed storyboards on critical care topics including sepsis, VitalWatch (electronic intensive care units), the Transformation of the ICU (TICU) project, ventilator-associated pneumonia, catheter-related bloodstream infections and rapid response teams. In addition to a hospital picnic, door prizes were awarded and stethoscope maintenance and repair was offered. Posters lined the walls of the ICU and each critical care staff member was presented with a token of appreciation such as a mug, a pin or a note pad.

“The positive reactions we received made the planning entirely worthwhile,” said Rosemaire Eaton, RN, nurse manager of VitalWatch and the TICU project manager at Health First. In January 2007, a team led by Eaton will meet to discuss the vision for the May 2007 NCCARM. The hospital intends to combine NCCARM with the American Nurses Association’s National Nurses Week, which will be held May 6 to 12, 2007. This will allow for a larger event with more speakers and a more festive picnic. “In addition to the recognition work we did for NCCARM last year, we are planning another marvelous picnic with children’s activities, great food and live music,” Eaton said.

Eaton advised others to involve as many departments as possible. “We included respiratory care, nursing, physicians — really everybody who worked in critical care.This brought our multiprofessional team much closer,” she explained. Many ICUs start small in their initial efforts, some by wearing blue for a day or by observing a week’s worth of activities. These efforts generally grow over the years, and some organizations work toward dedicating an entire month to NCCARM.

Creative Celebrations
Regardless of the size of a hospital’s celebration, commemorating NCCARM is important to the staff and community. The celebration at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Louisville, Kentucky, was a one-woman show helped along by the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s promotional kits. Julie Lau, RN, BSN, CCRN, presented NCCARM pins to the critical care nurses and attending physicians and gave NCCARM mugs to the chief of medical service and to the new critical care nurses. She also exhibited the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s (SCCM) critical care posters in the ICUs. She plans to purchase critical care promotional items again for May 2007.

The surgical ICU at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia also observed NCCARM last year. A NCCARM poster that listed the professional organizations involved was displayed proudly in the main lobby. Lectures, lunches, breakfasts and a raffle, which included SCCM and American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) memberships, raised awareness and a “wear-blue” day was observed.

“Our critical care awareness and recognition program was well received in our hospital,” said John Gallagher, MSN, RN, CCNS, CCRN, RRT, clinical nurse specialist for surgical critical care at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “We got great comments
on the poster, which was front and center in the lobby. It provided a good sense of the critical care team approach.”

“We are going to celebrate again in 2007,” he said. “Plans are being made to re-create some of this year’s activities, but we also plan to incorporate new ideas.” May is a time to pull all members of the critical care team together to recognize their commitment to caring for the most severely ill and injured patients. It is a time to praise all members of the team for their dedication and service. Plan now to ensure the critical care staff receives the recognition it deserves and to raise awareness in the community.

The Society, in partnership with the AACN, the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), the American Thoracic Society (ATS), and the American Association for Respiratory Care (AARC), recognizes May as National Critical Care  Awareness and Recognition Month. These organizations wish to recognize the devoted professionals whose compassion and dedication to the care of the critically ill and injured have made such significant differences in the lives of patients and their families.