Pediatric Sleep Lab
Safety Task Force
As the utility of sleep studies in children is increasingly recognized, more children are being studied in the sleep lab, especially those with complex medical conditions (neurological, cardiovascular, respiratory, and genetic disorders) and infants. Although this has significantly helped in diagnosis and precision management of children with sleep disorders, it has increased the risk of caring for children with these complex medical conditions in the sleep lab environment. Given the complex medical condition and or low physiological reserve, these children are at very high risk for having severe sleep disordered breathing, severe hypoxemia, and or quick clinical decompensation during the night, which may need rapid evaluation and medical intervention. Further, the sleep technologists are not trained in caring for children with complex medical conditions and lack the skills to identify and address evolving clinical situations. This increases the risk of adverse outcomes in the sleep lab environment, even leading to death.
This task force will develop and publish pediatric sleep lab safety principles to help guide various sleep centers to perform sleep studies safely in children with complex medical conditions.
The goal of this task force is to:
- Develop expert opinion-based census guidelines addressing the principles of pediatric sleep lab safety
- Identify principles of patient triage, staffing, and location of sleep study
- Develop training of sleep technologists to assess sleep study pattern recognition of worsening clinical situations
- Develop sleep technologist training guidance with multi-team huddle, simulation, mock codes, and communication through the chain of command
- Principles of quality improvement and quality assurance, in addition to various other safety event reporting and review, on an ongoing basis to learn from previous experience