A multidisciplinary approach to reducing ventilator-associated events in a busy urban hospital

Acute care hospitals are requested to perform ongoing surveillance of all patients undergoing mechanical ventilation for ventilator-associated events (VAEs), a serious and often devastating complication of the life-saving modality. Poor performance metrics in VAE rates were recognized at a tertiary care hospital in Hartford, Connecticut and as a result, a multidisciplinary team was developed in 2015 to analyze hospital and system data. The program utilized a multifaceted approach to reliably identify and subsequently prevent VAEs.