AHRQ Toolkit Available for Protecting Safety of Intensive Care Patients on Ventilators

AHRQ’s new Toolkit To Improve Safety for Mechanically Ventilated Patients is available to help hospitals improve safety for mechanically ventilated patients in intensive care units (ICUs). The Web-based resource provides tools to help ICU staff follow recommended bedside care, support patient mobility as soon as possible to speed recovery, and apply protective ventilation practices to reduce potential complications. The toolkit allows staff to apply proven methods of AHRQ’s Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program to reduce complications, including ventilator-associated pneumonia.

CUSP Toolkit

The Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) toolkit includes training tools to make care safer by improving the foundation of how your physicians, nurses, and other clinical team members work together. It builds the capacity to address safety issues by combining clinical best practices and the science of safety.

How to Use the CUSP Toolkit

The CUSP Toolkit can help your team learn key principles that increase safety. Once you’ve learned the basics, add-on modules can help you target certain safety issues.

Core CUSP Toolkit

Created for clinicians by clinicians, the CUSP toolkit is modular and modifiable to meet individual unit needs. Each module includes teaching tools and resources to support change at the unit level, presented through facilitator notes that take you step-by-step through the module, presentation slides, tools, videos.

Internet Citation: CUSP Toolkit. Content last reviewed June 2015. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/professionals/education/curriculum-tools/cusptoolkit/index.html