What Clinicians Need to Know About Awakening Trials
I have to admit, I wasn’t a fan of awakening trials at first. During my first two years in an Awake and Walking ICU, we rarely initiated sedation, so the need to turn it off wasn’t a struggle for us. When sedation was necessary, we simply turned it off when we deemed it unnecessary. It
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I’ve Won an Award for Best Nursing Innovation!
I am proud to announce that I’ve won an award for the “Best Nursing Innovation” in Nurse.org’s 2025 Best of Nursing Awards. This award, which highlights the Awake and Walking ICU initiative, is a triumphant recognition of nursing innovation, and all those nurses who’ve worked tirelessly over the years to develop these protocols and advocate
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Episode 186: The ICU Revolution at Mercy San Juan Medical Center Part 5 – Respiratory Therapy
What role do respiratory therapists play in creating Awake and Walking ICUs? How did Candace Wistrich, RRT, BSRT and Nelya Kapitula, RRT, BSRT lead their respiratory therapy department to move the revolution forward? They join us now to share their team’s journey! Episode Transcription Nelya Kapitula, RRT, BSRT 0:00 Candace and Nelya, thank you so
Over the last few years I have become aware of the PICS (post-intensive care syndrome) condition and the very serious negative impact that it has on our ICU survivors. I have become much more aware of the potential negative impact of anxiety, depression, PTSD and cognitive dysfunction. Many patients whom we consider saves in the sense they leave the ICU alive have many issues that most people would consider far from a successful experience. Their lives are often dramatically changed in a very negative fashion.
I am a professor of medicine and have been an ICU director for over forty years. What I find very disturbing in my own experience and that of many other intensivists is that this outcome is generally considered acceptable; the patient survived and will get better with time. We have little access to these patients and almost zero information about their condition unless they are unfortunate enough to return to our ICUs. Very few of us have a PICS clinic where we would have a chance to better understand the challenges that some of our patients encounter, and there are very few systems in place to provide feedback to us as ICU clinicians. Therefore, we are blissfully ignorant of the many challenges that a substantial number of our survivors encounter. This is a major problem. The vast majority of ICU survivors and their families will experience cognitive, emotional and physical symptoms which often have devastating impacts on their lives. At this time, with PICS clinics being a rarity, there is no reasonable mechanism for intensivists to have a solid perspective on the frequency and severity of this condition.
How patients and their families are treated in the ICU often has a major impact on how the patient and families survive post discharge. It is generally agreed that most sedation infusions, particularly benzodiazepines, frequently have higher incidences of delirium and post-discharge dysfunction. There are a few hospitals in this country where sedative infusions are rarely used and the incidence of the complications described above are dramatically decreased. I have visited one of these hospitals and was amazed to see how effectively patients on maximum ventilator support can be managed, even walking without sedative infusions. In an effort to explore this treatment option in greater detail I have identified Kali Dayton. She is a nurse practitioner who has practiced in this Awake and Walking ICU for many years and is an amazing source of information on this topic. After extensive discussion with many colleagues, administration and many others, and reviewing the major potential benefits of the program for our patients, we have decided to introduce this program into our hospital.
Peter J. Murphy, MD, FCCP, MRCPI, BSc
Perception Versus Reality: Debunking The Myths About Medically-Induced Comas
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