A Quality Improvement Initiative to Reduce the Frequency of Delays in Initiation and Restarts of Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy

Continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) is a lifesaving intervention for critically ill patients. Delays in initiation, or an inability to resume CRRT following a temporary suspension in therapy (CRRT restart), can result in suboptimal CRRT delivery.

Intensive care units across the health care system were experiencing significant delays in CRRT initiation and restarts.

A multimodal quality improvement initiative was implemented across 7 adult intensive care units, which allowed unit-based staff nurses to initiate and restart CRRT, a task that had previously been delegated to non-unit-based dialysis nurses.

A 75% reduction in CRRT initiation delays and a 90% reduction in CRRT restart delays were observed in the 12 months following the initiative. There were no adverse events or increased disposable CRRT circuit usage following the initiative.

Implementation of CRRT initiation and restarts by unit-based nurses were achievable and resulted in substantial improvements in timeliness of CRRT delivery.