Physician staffing in a Japanese intensive care unit

Abstract

Objectives: To evaluate the impact of introducing a high intensity physician staffing model in an academic center in Japan on patient outcome. Methods: Adult patients who stayed in the ICU for longer than 2 days between April 2005 and September 2008 were studied. Patient demographics were collected from our ICU database. Patients were divided into two groups: before (Period 1) and after (Period 2) January 2007, when the high intensity model was implemented in the ICU. Results: Five hundred and twelve patients in Period 1 and 563 patients in Period 2 were included in the study. A multivariate analysis for all study patients showed that Period 2 was significantly related to lower hospital mortality (odds ratio 0.62, P=0.040). Conclusions: It is possible that the high intensity physician staffing model contributed to better patient outcomes.