ReviewInternational journal for quality in health care : journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care2022
Development of a quality assurance tool for intensive care units in Lebanon during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Review in International journal for quality in health care : journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effect of Emergency Department Boarding on ICU Length of Stay and In-Hospital Mortality; A Retrospective Cohort Study.Archives of academic emergency medicine · 2025Article
- Assessing quality of critical care during an ongoing health emergency-a novel approach to evaluate quality of care at Lebanese public ICUs during COVID-19.International journal for quality in health care : journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care · 2024Article
- Strategies for Oxygen Ecosystems in Middle-Income Countries: A Review and Case Study from Lebanon.Emergency medicine international · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundDuring the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, low- and middle-income countries have rapidly scaled up intensive care unit (ICU) capacities. Doing this without monitoring the quality of care poses risks to patient safety and may negatively affect patient outcomes. While monitoring the quality of care is routine in high-income countries, it is not systematically implemented in most low- and middle-income countries. In this resource-scarce context, there is a paucity of feasibly implementable tools to monitor the quality of ICU care. Lebanon is an upper middle-income country that, during the autumn and winter of 2020-1, has had increasing demands for ICU beds for COVID-19. The World Health Organization has supported the Ministry of Public Health to increase ICU beds at public hospitals by 300%, but no readily available tool to monitor the quality of ICU care was available.
objectiveThe objective with this study was to describe the process of rapidly developing and implementing a tool to monitor the quality of ICU care at public hospitals in Lebanon.
methodsIn the midst of the escalating pandemic, we applied a systematic approach to develop a realistically implementable quality assurance tool. We conducted a literature review, held expert meetings and did a pilot study to select among identified quality indicators for ICU care that were feasible to collect during a 1-hour ICU visit. In addition, a limited set of the identified indicators that were quantifiable were specifically selected for a scoring protocol to allow comparison over time as well as between ICUs.
resultsA total of 44 quality indicators, which, using different methods, could be collected by an external person, were selected for the quality of care tool. Out of these, 33 were included for scoring. When tested, the scores showed a large difference between hospitals with low versus high resources, indicating considerable variation in the quality of care.
conclusionsThe proposed tool is a promising way to systematically assess and monitor the quality of care in ICUs in the absence of more advanced and resource-demanding systems. It is currently in use in Lebanon. The proposed tool may help identifying quality gaps to be targeted and can monitor progress. More studies to validate the tool are needed.
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Registered trials
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