This guideline reviews recommendations and best-practice statements from an international consensus committee on sepsis treatment and management to guide safe care for patients with sepsis or septic shock.

According to this qualitative study at a single academic institution, staff surgeons and intensivists frequently exclude resident physicians from patient care conversations. Reasons included lack of trust, need for timely communication, and a perception that residents cannot adequately contribute to decision making. This finding has important implications for the integration of communication training during medical education.

This prospective observational study found that acute respiratory distress syndrome remains under-recognized and under-treated in intensive care units. This finding suggests that interventions are needed to promptly identify and treat this time-sensitive condition.

This study revealed that cross-coverage, in which physicians care for patients they have learned about through handoffs, was associated with lower mortality in the intensive care unit. This finding counters persisting concerns about harm related to discontinuity of care. The authors suggest that an independent assessment by a second physician may mitigate cognitive errors.

In this study, clinicians were notified in real time about critical lab test abnormalities and provided with immediate decision support. However, this intervention did not prevent adverse events attributable to the critical test results, nor did it seem to result in more timely management.

This study determined that standardized order sets and dedicated consultation services are associated with less variability in the prescribing of best practices.