Preanalytical conditions of point-of-care testing in the intensive care unit are decisive for analysis reliability

Annals of Intensive Care

Table 1 Detailed features of each care unit

	Care unit
	Cardiac Surgery OR	Neurosurgical ICU	Polyvalent ICU
Number of beds in the critical care unit	1	10	37
Nurse-to-patient ratio	1:1	1:2.5	1:3.7
Daily mean number of POCT analysis	20	7	55
BGA location	Adjacent room in the cardiac surgery area, at a distance of 5 m	Central in the ICU, maximum of 32 m from the farthest room	Central in the ICU, maximum of 80 m from the farthest room
Blood collection by arterial cannulation	Yes	Yes	Yes
Care-giver in charge of the blood sampling	Anesthesiologist and/or nurse anesthetist	Nurse	Nurse
Care-giver in charge of the POCT analysis	Anesthesiologist and/or nurse anesthetist	Nurse	A care team member devoted to all POCT analyses (per quarter)
POCT user education	Initial education, regular information	2 h a year, regular information	2 h quarterly, at traineeship start, and regular information
Phone assistance for POCT (24/7)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Hemoglobin measurement on BGA	Yes	Yes	Yes
Potassium and sodium concentration measurement on BGA	Yes	No	Yes
Blood gas syringe used for POCT	SafePICO^® syringe	SafePICO^® syringe	Syringe BD Preset™

Characteristics of point-of-care testing organization for each care unit
OR operative room, ICU intensive care unit, POCT point-of-care testing, BGA blood gas analyzer