Practical strategies to implement the ESPNIC Nutrition Clinical recommendations into PICU practice

The European Society of Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care (ESPNIC) published 32 clinical recommendations around supporting nutrition in critically ill children following an extensive review of the literature online in January 2020. The challenge now is to engage with paediatric intensive care unit teams to implement these into their practice.

This practical implementation guide uses a recognised implementation model to guide pediatric intensive care professionals to implement these evidence-based clinical recommendations into clinical practice.

We use the Pronovost implementation of evidence into practice model to provide a practical framework with associated documents to facilitate PICU healthcare professional's implementation of these clinical recommendations into PICU practice. The paper is structured around the four steps in this model: summarising the evidence, identifying local barriers to implementation, measuring performance and ensuring all patients receive the intervention and useful checklists for implementation and compliance monitoring are provided, in addition to tables outlining key professional roles and responsibilities around nutrition in the paediatric Intensive care Unit.