The cardiac intensive care unit and operating room continuum: Quality and safety in the cardiac intensive care unit

In the past decade, there has been an increased focus on quality and safety in health care. Decreasing variation, increasing adherence to evidence based guidelines, monitoring processes, and measuring outcomes are critical for improving quality of care. This focus is further enhanced because of the high cost of health care and potential for harm. Patient safety is a discipline that applies safety science methods toward the goal of achieving reliable patient outcomes. The cardiac intensive care unit, in particular, brings cardiovascular surgery, anesthesia, cardiology, critical care physicians and nurses together in a critical microsystem to deliver care at the “sharp end”. This group must coalesce to form a team and culture of collaboration in order to provide high quality and safe care. This team must be vested in using quality improvement and safety science to advance the care of patients with critical cardiac disease.