67 Are NICUs too busy?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Primary Subject area Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Background In a health care system with limited resources, hospital organizational factors such as unit occupancy and nurse-to-patient ratios may contribute to patient outcomes. Objectives We aimed to assess the association of NICU occupancy and nurse staffing with outcomes of very preterm infants born < 33 weeks gestational age (GA). Design/Methods This was a multicenter retrospective cohort study of infants born 23-32 weeks GA without major congenital anomaly, admitted within 2 days after birth to one of four Level 3 NICUs in Quebec, Canada (2015-2018). For each 8 h shift, data on unit occupancy were obtained from a central provincial database (SiteNeo) and linked to the hospital nursing hours database (Logibec). Unit occupancy rates and nursing provision ratios (nursing hours/recommended nursing hours based on patient dependency categories) were pooled for the first shift, 24 h, and 7 days of admission for each infant. Patient data were obtained from the Canadian Neonatal Network database. Primary outcome was mortality and/or morbidity (severe neurological injury, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, necrotizing enterocolitis, and late-onset sepsis, severe retinopathy of prematurity). Adjusted odds ratios (AOR) for association of exposure with outcomes were estimated using generalized linear mixed models with a random effect for center, while adjusting for confounders (gestational age, small for gestational age, sex, outborn, Score for Neonatal Acute Physiology version 2, mode of delivery, and the other organizational variables). Results Among 1870 infants included in analyses, 796 (43%) had mortality/morbidity. Median occupancy was 89% (IQR 82-94) and median nursing provision was 1.13 (IQR 0.97-1.37). Overall higher NICU occupancy on shift of admission, first 24 h, and 7 days were associated with higher odds of mortality/morbidity (Figure 1) but nursing provision was not (Figure 2). Subgroup analysis by GA (< 29 and 29-32 weeks) yielded similar results (not shown). Generalized linear mixed model analyses showed that a 5% reduction in occupancy in the first 24 h of admission was associated with a 6% reduction in mortality/morbidity. Conclusion NICU occupancy is associated with mortality/morbidity among very preterm infants and may reflect lack of adequate resources in periods of high activity. Interventions aimed at reducing occupancy and maintaining adequate resources need to be considered as strategies to improve patient outcomes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".