Nursing case management in the neonatal intensive care unit, Part 2: Developing critical pathways

Nursing case management is a model of care delivery that focuses on achieving optimal patient outcomes in expected time frames while containing costs. The critical pathway is a tool used to help the team achieve the goals of nursing care management. The critical pathway serves as a multidisciplinary plan of care, based on time. Few neonatal critical pathways are available in the literature. They can be easily developed through a collaborative process. This article presents the author's recommendations on how to develop critical pathways. Once developed, they can serve as an important source of communication among disciplines and as a source of information regarding patient outcomes. Critical pathways can also be used as a teaching tool. Two critical pathways are included in this article.