Rush University Medical Center’s Critical Care Outreach Team, or CCOT, provides bedside consultation and emergency response for patients, nurses and providers outside of the critical care unit. Each member is a highly skilled intensive care unit-trained nurse certified in critical care nursing and brings a unique background and skillset to this important work.
The team’s mission is to improve early detection of patient deterioration, decrease ICU readmission and eliminate out-of-ICU arrests.
The CCOT offers a monthly workshop to acute care nurses called Decompensation, Assessment, Recognition, Training (DART) aimed at improving early recognition and management of deteriorating patients. The CCOT has collaborated with multiple rapid response teams throughout the Chicagoland area to form the Midwest Society of Rapid Response Teams (mSRRS). The mSRRS hosts quarterly educational offerings and exists to define and support best practices in rapid response systems.
Symposium
The Rush University Medical Center CCOT hosted its inaugural annual Critical Care Outreach Symposium in February 2019. The symposium was aimed at RNs, RTs and practitioners from all disciplines, as well as students, interested in improving rapid response systems through the development and use of critical care outreach teams.
As part of the 2019 symposium, the Medical Center's CCOT was honored to host two critical care outreach nurses from the U.K., who offered an international perspective on critical care outreach, including nurse-driven initiatives not yet common in the U.S. Their involvement was the culmination of two years of collaboration between Rush University Medical Center’s CCOT and counterparts in Britain.
The CCOT Symposium also occurred in 2020.
International Collaboration
In 2018, the Rush University Medical Center’s CCOT traveled to Brighton, England, to meet with colleagues at Royal Sussex County Hospital. The team attended the morning emergency response huddle and shadowed the hospital’s critical care outreach team to gain insight into the workflow and practice of the critical care outreach team in England’s National Health System.
Before returning home to Chicago, the team traveled to Gatwick, England, to attend a local patient deterioration workshop, which provided further insight to the education and networking environment of rapid response systems in the NHS.
In the summer of 2019, the CCOT traveled to Calgary, Canada, and presented their work on international collaboration at the Sigma Theta Tau Research Conference.
Contact Us
If you have questions about the CCOT, email us at CCOT@rush.edu.