Martha Curley, PhD, RN, FAAN, Associate Professor of Nursing, has received a five-year $10M R01 award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, co-funded by the National Institute for Nursing Research, for a multi-site clinical trial, “Sedation Management in Pediatric Patients with Acute Respiratory Failure Study.”

Ensuring the safety and comfort of critically ill infants or children supported on mechanical ventilation is integral to the practice of pediatric critical care. This cluster randomized clinical trial will test an innovative approach to sedation management that includes: [a] team education and consensus on the use of sedatives in pediatric patients supported on mechanical ventilation, [b] team identification of the patient’s trajectory of illness and daily prescription of a sedation goal, [c] a Nurse-Implemented Goal-Directed Comfort Algorithm that guides moment-to-moment titration of opioids and benzodiazepines, and [d] team feedback on sedation management performance.

Eighteen pediatric intensive care units (9 randomized to the sedation management intervention and 9 to continue to provide usual care) will enroll over 2,700 critically-ill infants and children supported on mechanical ventilation.