Evaluation and comparison of admission and discharge criteria in admitted patients’ of pediatric intensive care unit of Bahrami children’s hospital with the criteria of American Academy of Pediatrics

Background: During the past few years several pediatric intensive care units (PICU) are opened across the country. The effective use of PICU beds is an important issue because they are expensive and have limited resources. The aim of this study was to evaluate the PICU bed utilization in a new established general PICU in a university children’s hospital.
Methods: In a three-month period after opening PICU, the criteria of admission and discharge of all admitted and discharged patients were reviewed and compared with the standard criteria of admission and discharge of American Academy of Pediatrics.
Findings: Fifty six patients (34 males and 22 females) with median age of 2.8 years were admitted in this period and totally stayed 254 days. Wrong admission rate was 20%, these patients consumed about 10% of the days of care. Early (wrong) discharge was found in 6% of patients. The average and median duration of stay was 4.5 and 2 days, respectively. Only 9% of patients stayed for 14 or more days.
Conclusion: Adherence to standard guidelines of admission and discharge improves the utilization of PICU beds.

Keywords
Pediatric Intensive Care Unit , Admission criteria , Discharge criteria