Use of Pareto Principle in Designing Critical Care Education Program in Low Resource Area

Pareto rule states that 20% of activates are repeated 80% of time. Critical care required highly competent and well-trained health care providers. In low resource countries, it is challenging and expensive and time consuming to design a comprehensive educational program. We wonder if application of Pareto principle can help in designing critical care educational program. Aim of this study is to assess the frequency of repeated activities and interventions in ICU. This is a cross-sectional study, data collected from ICUs of seven hospitals in Khartoum. Total number of patients was 52 with mean age of 48.3 years and total number of ICU days of study population was 431 days. Regarding nurses’ intervention 12 items (44%) were done by nursing staff all the time. out of common lab tests six of them (21.4%) were requested for almost 80% or more of patients. Very few medications (114) out of 1453 drug approved by FDA were ordered to our study population, which represent 7.84%. In conclusion, Pareto principle is appealing in a way that enables us to discover the commonly used activities in ICU. It might be feasible to create an educational program in critical care by starting with commonly done intervention then expanding.