SCCM Member Accomplishments Put Focus on the Value of Critical Care
 
Michael Anderson, MD, has been appointed by President Bush to serve on the National Commission on Children and Disasters, a group formed to develop an emergency response plan addressing the specific needs of children. Drawing from lessons learned after Hurricane Katrina and other events, the bipartisan Commission will study children’s needs and
identify and evaluate existing resources meant to address those needs, creating a final report with recommendations in two years.
 
“I’m honored to participate in such important work, and it will be a thrill to help out in this process,” Anderson said. Anderson is a pediatric critical care specialist at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in
Cleveland, Ohio, but it was his innovative response to Hurricane Katrina that helped pave the way to this special appointment.
 
Anderson led a plan to create a Cleveland pediatric response team to assist children affected by Hurricane Katrina. He organized a multiprofessional team of pediatric experts from Rainbow to prepare for evacuees. While no evacuees ever arrived in Cleveland, Anderson realized that children’s unique needs could be overlooked without input from pediatric specialists trained to respond. His career took a sharp turn as Anderson examined how to bring the resources of children’s hospitals to the forefront of pediatric disaster medicine.
 
He developed the Pediatric Specialty Team-Ohio (PST-Ohio), a rotating team of volunteers from Ohio’s six children’s hospitals prepared to respond to pediatric needs. Having team members from different local hospitals ensures no facility is short-handed during an emergency. PST-Ohio will eventually serve on a federal and state level, and Anderson’s effort has emerged as a national model for future pediatric disaster teams.

The 10-member Commission will tackle medical issues as well as strategies related to reuniting children with families, providing housing and education, maintaining the juvenile justice system, and many other factors. Anderson said the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) likely will be a valuable resource throughout his two-year appointment.

“I’m proud to be a member of SCCM; it represents the best and the brightest of our specialty. As this Commission moves forward, I’m confident we will look to the Society and its members for guidance and information. SCCM has already shown to be leader in disaster preparedness and in dealing with mass-casualty situations.”

Peter J. Pronovost, MD, PhD, FCCM, was honored by TIME magazine as one the 100 most influential people of 2008. Pronovost was recognized as one of the leading scientists and thinkers; he was commended for his work in developing the intensive care unit (ICU) checklist. The magazine outlines how Pronovost began investigating hospital-acquired infections at Johns Hopkins Hospital, finding that arming physicians with a chart to remind them of each step in routine procedures drastically reduced the medical errors that lead to such infections.
 
Pronovost’s work in reducing hospital-acquired infections in Michigan ICUs with the checklist is well known throughout the critical care community, as are his numerous other accomplishments as director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Innovation in Quality Patient Care. However, TIME’s recognition marks an important milestone in public awareness.
 
“It is important that this work has received recognition by the lay press,” Pronovost said. “It highlights critical care, patients safety and the rigorous work done within the field for the public, with the ultimate benefactors being our patients.” Pronovost credited his multiprofessional team and stressed his passion for patients, saying his interest in patient
safety was sparked by the misdiagnosis and death of his father.

“I was surprised and delighted when I heard that I would be honored by TIME,” he said. “Critical care professionals have been one of the world’s leaders in concentrating on patient safety, and I think the Society of Critical Care Medicine has been at the front of many of those efforts within the field.” Pronovost has been active member of the Society since his days as a fellow. He cited the importance of membership throughout his career as a researcher and practitioner, especially during his early career when he first started publishing about the benefits of intensitivsts.
 
Pronovost was quick to look beyond his own personal accomplishments to focus on the long-term benefits of the research. “We need to find balance between research that is scientifically sound and research that calls for feasible interventions,” he said. “We need to be able to say we are safer and that we became safer with interventions practical enough to implement and evaluate at all hospitals. Finding the sweet spot is no easy task.”