The World PICU Awareness Week Committee exists to raise awareness about #PedsICU in general and any important themes impacting the specialty by engaging members and key stakeholders in awareness and advocacy activities at a global and regional level. This 7 day event culminates in World PICU Awareness Day on the 2nd Friday of May, annually.
This year’s campaign will focus on the theme “ICU Liberation Bundle“. Each region focuses on a different letter of the bundle. Thanks to our collaboration with OPENPediatrics, every day during World PICU Awareness Week a podcast will be released by a different region sharing their experience.
World PICU Awareness Week 2024 focused on the ICU Liberation Bundle, a framework designed to improve outcomes and quality of life for critically ill children and their families. Each global region explored one component of the bundle—spanning from pain and sedation management to early mobility, nutrition, and family engagement—sharing their perspectives and practices through a collaborative podcast series with OPENPediatrics. Together, these conversations highlighted the global movement toward humanizing paediatric intensive care and promoting recovery beyond survival.
The ICU Liberation Bundle reminds clinicians that recovery extends beyond medical stabilization—it is about returning children and families to meaningful, connected lives.
From Analgesia to Nutrition, each element of the bundle contributes to a more holistic and compassionate approach to intensive care, emphasizing evidence-based practice and multidisciplinary teamwork.
Through daily regional podcasts and local events like Japan’s #WPAW24 series, WFPICCS and OPENPediatrics fostered a shared space for learning and reflection, helping PICU teams worldwide translate principles into daily practice.
We discuss some practical impacts and challenges of the implementation of Sedation, Analgesia, Delirium and Withdrawal guidelines as part of Liberation initiatives in two Australian PICUs. Two years after the release of the PANDEM guidelines, how has this influenced sedation practices?
The B Element episode will focus on both Spontaneous Awakening Trials (SATs) and Spontaneous Breathing Trials (SBTs).
The D Element episode will focus on how to Assess, Prevent, and Manage Delirium.
The E Element episode will focus on Lessons and Experiences after launching an Early Mobilization Program.
The F element episode highlights how important it is to understand the role of each family member in PICU care. What are the main problems and challenges experienced by family members in Latin America? We also talk about contextualizing children who are family members (siblings) and how to include them in the care of the patient during PICU care.
In this podcast Professor Lyvonne Tume and dietitian Lynne Latten discuss the role of nutrition within the PICU, how requirements are assessed, how we can monitor the impact of this nutrition has on outcome and what we need to think about once the child is liberated from the PICU.
