Patient care checklists- coming soon to a burn unit near you

I was an early adopter of the wonder of the ICU checklist, particularly after reading the compelling findings from the ICUs at Johns Hopkins 10 years ago.  Their reduction in CLABSIs and VAPs were too compelling to ignore.

While I wanted to work with a checklist that was good for patient safety, I wanted one that would do a bit more in our patient population than address those issues. While all specialties like to argue that their patients are unique, burn care definitely has some nuances that create an altered playing field for our patients as they move through their recovery into their subsequent care.  Several years ago, Amy Liepert worked collaboratively with an interdisciplinary team to create a Burn Unit patient care checklist.  We implemented it in a somewhat half-hearted fashion, even though at the time some genuine benefits were noted by many staff members.

This week, we’ve done a phased go-live with the 2014 version of Amy’s checklist.  I say phased because as we really use it every day for every patient, adaptations may yet occur; we’re treating it as a draft for the next few weeks so that we can take an honest look at what works and what doesn’t.

Here’s what we talked about during teaching rounds on Monday to give you an overview if you’re unfamiliar with the history of checklists in the ICU.

And, of course, if you have a robust ICU checklist- particularly one for a burn unit- I’m eager for your thoughts.