Pediatric Critical Care Nutrition

Pediatric International Nutrition Study - in Critically Ill Children: 2009

Benchmarking Practice, Illuminating Gaps and Examining Outcomes

Updates from the Principal Investigator

Dear All,

The first Pediatric International Nutrition Survey is in the phase of data checking and verification. I am thrilled to announce that 32 PICU's participated in the study and enrolled 533 subjects. This is indeed a respectable sample size which will surely instruct our future nutrition practice at the bedside. I am grateful to each one of you for your support and help with meeting the goals of our first collaborative endeavor.

We are now very close to sending out individual "site reports". The site report will summarize your site's performance and allow you to compare your nutrition practices with other sites in the study. You have committed a significant amount of time and resources to participate in this study. We hope that you will benefit from this unique benchmarking opportunity to highlight your strengths and practice gaps. We have worked hard to generate site reports and hope that they will be a tremendous resource for local quality improvement initiatives on your end.

By now you must have received a "query letter" from us requesting that you fill in missing data points from your site. Please make every effort to give this your prompt attention, so that we may stay on course to generate the site reports. I request that you turn in your completed data query forms by May 31, 2010.

Please contact Lori Bechard (lori.bechard@childrens.harvard.edu) if you haven't received your data queries or if you have any questions related to your individual data query forms. I look forward to the exciting results of this study. This is only the first step for our collaborative approach towards optimizing nutrition therapy for the critically ill child.

At this stage, I would like to inform you that the next International Study will be conducted in Spring 2011. As we have experienced during the first study, we will need to start the IRB process early and I will be sending out the announcement, study details, and supporting documents in due time. I sincerely hope that you will continue to be on board. I will seek your comments and suggestions as we plan details of our next study.

Wishing you all a warm and healthy summer!

Nilesh

Yours Sincerely,

Nilesh M. Mehta, MD, DCH
Principal Investigator
Faculty, Division of Critical Care Medicine
Department of Anesthesia, Perioperative and Pain Medicine
Children's Hospital, Boston Tel: 613-549-6666 x3339
Nilesh.mehta@childrens.harvard.edu

Lori Bechard, M.Ed., R.D., LDN
Project Leader (Pediatric Study)
Tel: 617-355-5293
Lori.bechard@childrens.harvard.edu