Nursing perception of the availability of the intensive care unit medical director for triage and conflict resolution.

The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the Society of Critical Care Medicine call on the physician medical director of the intensive care unit (ICU) to play an important role in admission and discharge decision-making. To assess nursing perception of the medical director's involvement in this decision-making, we analyzed data from a questionnaire administered at an annual ICU management conference to ICU nursing supervisors representing 101 hospitals and 137 ICUs. We asked nurses if the medical director or his or her designee (excluding residents) was available at night for triage, admission decision-making, and conflict resolution. In 21% (29) of the ICUs, nurses perceived no medical director at all. In the 54 ICUs with full-time medical directors, nurses in approximately 30% of the units said that there was no nighttime availability of the medical director or designee. The data suggest that many ICUs lack physician leadership in ICU management and resource allocation.