SCCM is Making Headlines
Throughout the year, the Society of Critical Care Medicine has received much attention from the media for its initiatives and programs as well as from articles published Critical Care Medicine. The Society invites this media coverage as it continues to stay on the cutting edge of healthcare issues affecting the critical care community and the public.
Patient and Family Guideline
A front-page article in the Wall Street Journal focused on family-friendly intensive care units. The article referred to the Society of Critical Care Medicine's guidelines for support of the family in the patient-centered intensive care unit and quotes Judy Davidson, RN, FCCM, lead author of the guideline. "Why would we presume that we can dictate how often or who is allowed to visit during the patient's most trying moments on earth?" said Davidson. (Landro L. ICUs’ New Message Welcome, Families. Wall Street Journal. July 12, 2007)
MyICUCare.org
Having a loved one in the ICU is very stressful on family members, particularly because patients often cannot speak. HealthDay reported on a study in which researchers enrolled the family members of 126 dying patients from 22 intensive care units in France. Half of the family members participated in a standard 20-minute end-of-life conference. The other half participated in more proactive conferences and were provided bereavement brochures at the end of the sessions. Families in this group were encouraged to ask questions, and the sessions usually lasted about 30 minutes. When doctors approached grieving families and took more time to listen, families' stress symptoms were reduced by 24%, anxiety symptoms by 22% and depression symptoms by 27%. HealthDay pointed to the Society of Critical Care Medicine's (SCCM) MyICUCare Web site for additional resources, as the Society publishes a brochure series that deals with the end of life in the intensive care unit as well as other issues. (Gordon S. End-of-Life Communication Helps Families Cope With Loss. HealthDay. August 10, 2007)
Rapid Response Teams
Advance Newsmagazine ran an article on the growing hospital trend to implement rapid response teams (RRTs) to head off adverse events in the intensive care unit. The article highlights the advantages of bringing together a team of critical care experts to respond to a situation as soon as a caregiver detects warning signs. Society past president Charles G. Durbin Jr., MD, FCCM, was quoted in the article. "We need to have some way either to provide life-saving care or to prevent complications," he said. "An RRT can provide help on a timely basis anywhere in the hospital system." The Society has advocated for the implementation of multiprofessional rapid response teams and has held several courses on organizing a team. (Yemenijian D. Rapid response teams aim to improve patient safety. Advance Newsmagazine. 2007; 16[3]:40)
Lifelong Learning
In its November 2007 issue, Academic Medicine cited the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s promotion of professionalism in an article focused teaching and assessing professional values within medicine. The author references the epigrams displayed throughout the 36th Critical Care Congress stressing education. “Examples ranged from Nelson Mandela (“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”), to Michelangelo (“I am still learning”), to Herbert Spencer (“The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action”), to B.B. King (“The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you”). These and similar brief statements engaged the participants’ interest and stimulated informal conversations among the physicians in attendance, even though they did not deal directly with the medical and scientific aspects of critical care. The SCCM was thus able to highlight two important professional responsibilities of physicians – teaching and lifelong learning – without a great deal of energy or expense,” according to the article. It is important that other professional journals take note of the Society’s innovative approaches to learning. (Swick HM. Acad Med. 2007; 82:1022)
