Multidisciplinary expert panel report on fluid stewardship: perspectives and practice.

Although effective and appropriate fluid management is a critical aspect of quality care during hospitalization, the widespread adoption of consistent policies that ensure adequate fluid stewardship has been slow and heterogenous. Despite evidence-based guidelines on fluid management being available, clinical opinions continue to diverge on important aspects of care in this setting, and the consistency of guideline implementation is far from ideal. A multidisciplinary panel of leading practitioners and experts convened to discuss best practices for ongoing staff education, intravenous fluid therapy, new training technologies, and strategies to track the success of institutional fluid stewardship efforts. Fluid leads should be identified in every hospital to ensure consistency in fluid administration and monitoring. In this article, strategies to communicate the importance of effective fluid stewardship for the purposes of education, training, institutional support, and improvement of patient outcomes are reviewed and recommendations are summarized.

Lung ultrasound as a tool to guide respiratory physiotherapy.

Lung ultrasound (LUS) is becoming an invaluable tool in the management of critically ill patients. We report two cases showing the importance of LUS as a guide to optimize respiratory physiotherapy in the intensive care unit, allowing a successful lung donation process and to redirect the physiotherapist's approach. The use of LUS requires an adequate training but it is becoming an important tool in management algorithms for critically ill patients.

Distinctive CD8+ T cell and MHC class I signatures in polycythemia vera patients.

Polycythemia vera (PV) is a myeloproliferative neoplasm characterized by overproduction of red blood cells. We have performed a comprehensive characterization of blood immune cells for expression of naïve and memory receptors as well as ß2m-associated and ß2m-free MHC class I heavy chains, also known as closed and open conformers, respectively, in PV patients and age-matched controls (CTR). We show that the peripheral CD3+CD8+ T cell pool in PV patients is clearly divided into two discrete populations, a more granular CD3+CD8high T cell population enriched in effector-memory CD45RA+ T cells (CD8+ TEMRA) when compared to CTR (P < 0.001), and a less granular CD3+CD8int T cell population that is completely absent in the CTR group (78 vs. 0%, P < 0.001) and is a mixture of naïve (CD8+ TN) and CD8+ TEMRA cells expressing intermediate levels of CD28, i.e., CD3+CD8intCD28int. While the percentage of CD3+CD8int TN cells correlated positively with the number of erythrocytes, the percentage of CD3+CD8int TEMRA correlated negatively with the number of platelets. Finally, we report that PV patients' lymphocytes and monocytes display lower levels of closed (W6/32+) MHC-I conformers at the cell surface while exhibiting increased amounts of open (HC-10+) MHC-I conformers. The implications of this distinctive immune signature are discussed.

Biomedical Simulation: Evolution, Concepts, Challenges and Future Trends.

Biomedical simulation is an effective educational complement for healthcare training, both at undergraduate and postgraduate level. It enables knowledge, skills and attitudes to be acquired in a safe, educationally orientated and efficient manner. In this context, simulation provides skills and experience that facilitate the transfer of cognitive, psychomotor and proper communication competences, thus changing behavior and attitudes, and ultimately improving patient safety. Beyond the impact on individual and team performance, simulation provides an opportunity to study organizational failures and improve system performance. Over the last decades, simulation in healthcare had a slow but steady growth, with a visible maturation in the last ten years. The simulation community must continue to provide the core leadership in developing standards. There is a need for strategies and policy development to ensure its coordinated and cost-effective implementation, applied to patient safety. This paper reviews the evolutionary movements of biomedical simulation, including a review of the Portuguese initiatives and nationwide programs. For leveling knowledge and standardize terminology, basic but essential concepts in clinical simulation, together with some considerations on assessment, validation and reliability are presented. The final sections discuss the current challenges and future initiatives and strategies, crucial for the integration of simulation programs in the greater movement toward patient safety.

A simulação biomédica é uma ferramenta educativa para a formação nas ciências da saúde, com aplicação nos vários níveis de ensino. Proporciona experiências ativas e sistemáticas de aprendizagem com o treino de conhecimentos, habilidades e atitudes, de forma segura, pedagogicamente orientada e eficiente. Neste contexto, a simulação biomédica proporciona habilidades e experiência que facilitam a transferência de competências cognitivas, psicomotoras e de comunicação, mudando assim o comportamento e atitudes, aumentando, em última instância, a segurança do doente. Para além do impacto sobre o desempenho individual e de equipa, a simulação proporciona o ambiente ideal para o estudo de falhas organizacionais e teste de melhorias nos desempenhos dos sistemas. Nas últimas décadas, a simulação na área da saúde cresceu lentamente, mas de forma constante, com um amadurecimento significativo nos últimos 10 anos. A comunidade de simulação deve continuar a liderar o estabelecimento de standards nesta área, assim como o desenvolvimento de estratégicas e políticas para assegurar a sua implementação coordenada e custo-efetiva, no aumento da segurança do doente. Este artigo apresenta os movimentos evolutivos da simulação biomédica, incluindo uma revisão das iniciativas portuguesas e programas nacionais. Para nivelar o conhecimento e padronizar a terminologia, são apresentados conceitos básicos, mas essenciais, da simulação clínica, juntamente com algumas considerações sobre avaliação, validação e fiabilidade. As seções finais discutem os desafios atuais e as iniciativas e estratégias futuras, cruciais para a integração de programas de simulação no movimento global de promoção da segurança do paciente.

Flight physiology training experiences and perspectives: survey of 117 pilots.

INTRODUCTION: Human factors and awareness of flight physiology play a crucial role in flight safety. Even so, international legislation is vague relative to training requirements in hypoxia and altitude physiology. METHODS: Based on a previously developed survey, an adapted questionnaire was formulated and released online for Portuguese pilots. Specific questions regarding the need for pilot attention monitoring systems were added to the original survey. There were 117 pilots, 2 of whom were women, who completed the survey. RESULTS: Most of the pilots had a light aviation license and flew in unpressurized cabins at a maximum ceiling of 10,000 ft (3048 m). The majority of the respondents never experienced hypoxic symptoms. In general, most of the individuals agreed with the importance of an introductory hypoxia course without altitude chamber training (ACT) for all pilot populations, and with a pilot monitoring system in order to increase flight safety. DISCUSSION: Generally, most of the pilots felt that hypoxia education and training for unpressurized aircraft is not extensive enough. However, almost all the respondents were willing to use a flight physiology monitoring system in order to improve flight safety.