The national Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet) has confirmed that the trust’s PCCU is a positive outlier for in-PICU risk adjusted mortality.
Jonathan Grimbley, deputy clinical director for paediatrics and paediatric critical care lead at the trust said: “Put simply, the mortality rate in the PCCU during the reporting period is lower than the expected statistical range, even when corrected for number of patients admitted to the unit and severity of illness on admission.
“I’m delighted that the unit has been recognised like this. I believe this is reflective of the excellent care that we provide on our PCCU on a daily basis. We are one of very few standalone level two PCCUs in the country and should be proud that we have been
identified in this way.”
Around 350 children and young people each year receive high dependency or critical care at James Cook’s PCCU.
The stand-alone unit is equipped to care for very sick children and young people requiring the latest high dependency support including noninvasive ventilation.
PICANet was established to develop and maintain a secure and confidential high quality clinical database of paediatric intensive care activity in order to identify best clinical practice, monitor supply and demand, monitor and review outcomes of treatment
episodes, facilitate healthcare planning and quantify resource requirements and study the epidemiology of critical illness in children.
The core dataset of demographic and clinical data on all admissions, collated by PICANet, allows comparison of PICU activity at a local level with national benchmarks.