The Critical Care Resource Intensivist Model: An Essential Component to Critical Care Nursing

At a large academic level 1 trauma center, an additional resource was added at night, the Critical Care Resource Intensivist (CCRI), which is a multi-disciplinary group of fellowship trained intensivists. Prior to implementation of this additional resource, concurrent to implementation and one-year post implementation, critical care (CC) nurses that provide care in the surgical, neurologic, medical, and cardiac intensive care units (ICU) were anonymously surveyed to evaluate the CCRI model from a nursing perspective. Survey results were aggregated via an electronic cloud-based survey tool. Our goal was to obtain qualitative data to inform hypothesis generation and quality improvement questions. As such, we collected free-text answers to the questions, "Do you ever have concerns about availability of faculty in the ICU?" and, "Do you have any suggestions or comments after implementation of CCRI?" Answers were categorized into pre- and postCCRI strata. When coding the data, the investigators found a total of 9 themes that connected all the free-text survey. The themes included faculty accessibility, nurse safety, satisfaction, continuum of care and patient safety, to name a few. CCRI was uniformly and unanimously felt to improve patient care and decrease provider stress, because of improved availability and responsiveness of cc-faculty. The need to expand the CCRI model across institutional campuses was also stated clearly within their responses. These surveys demonstrate the strong support for the CCRI model by CC nurse providers. Further studies should investigate the effects of CCRI on nurse provider burnout and turnover, especially given recent crises in nursing.