Measuring and monitoring quality in satellite echo services within critical care: An exploration of best practice

Abstract

The subspecialty of critical care echocardiography is a rapidly developing area of cardiac imaging.The United Kingdom Committeefor Critical CareEchocardiography wassetupin2009 to examine the remit of echocardiography in critical care, and a successful collaboration between the British Society of Echocardiography (BSE) and the Intensive Care Society has resulted inthe establishmentoftwo new critical care accreditation processes: Focused Intensive Care Echocardiography and Advanced Critical Care Echocardiography. These accreditation processes are currently driving the development of satellite echo services within critical care departments throughout the UK. Individual practitioner - and more recently, departmental - accreditation have become well-established processes advocated by the BSE. Practitioner accreditation promotes accountability, and departmental accreditation standardises the environment in which practitioners operate. The accreditation of individual echocardiographers has been embraced by the critical care fraternity; we propose that departmental accreditation for critical care echo services be viewed in the same way. Identifying quality indicators for satellite echocardiography services within critical care areasis therefore the focus of the present quality exploration: our aim is to propose a set of parameters against which satellite critical care echo services can bebenchmarked.Inpublishing our suggestions, we hope to stimulate debate in light of the rapid evolution of critical care echocardiography as a subspecialty practice. We suggest that our proposed parameters could be used to maintain satellite critical care service standards and to help identify departments capable of delivering high-quality services and training in critical care echocardiography.