A care bundle is a term used within critical care that you may not be familiar with. It describes a group of evidence based interventions that are implemented together to improve practice and hopefully improve outcomes.

Examples of Care Bundles include:

Ventilator care bundle

30 degree head up tilt

Thromboprophylaxis           

Gastric protection

Sedation hold

Head Injury Care bundle

Maintain cerebral perfusion pressure 60-70mmHg

PaO2 > 11kPa

PaCO2< 4.5 – 5kPa

Core temp 35 – 36 degrees C

Na 140 – 155 mmol/l

Glucose 4.0 – 8.3 mmol/l           

Tracheostomy Care bundle

Humidification

Cleaning of the inner tube

Suctioning

Cuff pressure

Stoma care

Emergency bedside equipment  

Benchmarking and audit tools for the compliance of the Critical Care Bundles are available here.

Guidelines

We are striving towards an online handbook for all staff in critical care.

It is currently under construction but will be found on the trust intra-net under the clinical guidelines and protocols icon. Until this is fully functional the desktop computers on each unit have a folder entitled Handbook of Critical Care.

If you feel that there are clinical topics that are not covered in this file or would like to update any of the contents, please contact Dr Gonzalez  Dr Lowes or Dr Monkhouse.

This could be done as part of a quality improvement project.