A multidisciplinary multimodal strategy to improve nutritional support in the intensive care unit

Abstract

The application of nutritional recommendations in the intensive care unit (ICU) is often poor. In our ICU, we developed a multidisciplinary and multimodal nutritional protocol based on knowledge transfer. The steps of the protocol are: creation of a multidisciplinary nutritional team, audit of the current practice, identification of possible obstacles to the implementation of a nutritional protocol, audit of the current expertise on nutrition, education of the ICU clinical staff, drafting of a nutritional algorithm based on international guidelines, creation of reminders and computer-aided support, assessment of the results, and maintenance of the knowledge base over time. This nutritional protocol allowed to significantly improve the nutritional support of patients, in particular to optimize calories and protein intakes and to increase the early use of enteral nutrition.