Improving Safety and Quality of Tracheal Intubation Practice in Pediatric ICUs

Advanced airway interventions are common high risk, high stakes events for children in intensive care units (ICU) and emergency departments (ED), with risk for life and health threatening consequences.

This study will evaluate local pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) as well as EDs and delivery room (DR) practice, and benchmark against other PICUs, CICUs, NICUs, DRs and EDs as a part of Multi-Center Airway Safety collaborative network (NEAR4KIDS). The goal of the study is to utilize collected benchmarked data to improve local practice. In order to develop this quality improvement (QI) intervention and collaboration, it is necessary to collect baseline data to describe current practice and to continuously evaluate the effectiveness of any QI intervention.

Inclusion Criteria: * Primary advanced airway events (on patients of all ages) in the PICU, CICU, NICU, DR and ED including: Tracheal Intubation, Laryngeal mask placement, Emergency tracheostomy and/or cricothyrotomy * Failed extubation attempts or unplanned extubations that require re-intubation will be considered a new primary intubation. Exclusion Criteria: * Primary advanced airway events (tracheal intubations, laryngeal mask placement, emergency tracheostomy and/or cricothyrotomy) in the Operating Suites.