Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting
Date Submitted: Oct 17, 2022
Open Peer Review Period: Oct 17, 2022 - Dec 12, 2022
Date Accepted: Jan 16, 2023
Date Submitted to PubMed: Feb 1, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
A Survey of Canadian Pediatric Intensive Care Adaptations for Critically Ill Adults during the COVID-19 Pandemic
ABSTRACT
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmed Canadian hospitals with adult admissions. A large number required critical care therapies, putting significant strain on hospital resources. In order to decompress adult Intensive Care Units (ICUs), Pediatric ICUs (PICUs) introduced adapted models of traditional care to lessen these burdens.
Objective:
To evaluate how PICUs across Canada adapted care for the high volumes of critically ill adults.
Methods:
A survey containing 40 questions was sent to the 14 PICU medical directors in Canada. The survey was designed to gain perspective on the various adaptations PICUs instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Results:
From 13 respondents (93%), ten PICUs (77%) participated in at least one or more adaptations to support the influx of COVID-19 adult admissions. Central challenges included disorganization, loss of autonomy and compromised patient care. Significant advantages from these adaptations were a sense of learning and comradery.
Conclusions:
Our findings highlight an unpreparedness for critical care surge capacity. During COVID-19, adaptations rapidly emerged in Canada that involved PICUs with adult care. In the future, preplanned adaptations to optimize robust critical care services should be developed from what has been learned through COVID-19.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.