The use of sedation to promote patient comfort and safety within the intensive care unit (ICU) is a foundation of critical care practice. As such, sedation-related practice guidelines are routinely evaluated and refined. It is widely accepted that heavy sedation of critically ill patients should be limited to specific circumstances (eg, intracranial hypertension and severe respiratory failure), and instead, providers should target light sedation in most cases. Notable ambiguity persists concerning the definition of light sedation; however, a widely accepted definition describes light sedation as using a sedative dose that allows the patient to respond to 3 simple commands (eg, open eyes, squeeze hand, stick out tongue). The 2 most-used measures of sedation (and agitation) are the Sedation-Agitation Scale (SAS) and the Richmond Agitation-Sedation Scale (RASS). However, scholars and clinicians have proposed various thresholds for light sedation that differ from those proposed by the developers of the SAS and RASS.Given this lack of consensus, the investigators explored the relationships of SAS and RASS scores to the occurrence of light sedation and their accuracy in identifying it. The investigators conducted 96 total SAS, RASS, and light sedation assessments by 2 sedation evaluators while a patient was under continuous sedation and after the sedation was lightened. Nine of 25 patients (36%) were sedated with a combination of opiates and sedatives. Compared with the respective light sedation scores proposed by the developers (SAS score = 3, positive predictive value [PPV] = 0.62; RASS score = –2, PPV = 0.73), the probability of a patient meeting the investigator’s definition of light sedation was 26% higher for patients with a SAS score of 4 (PPV = 0.88), and 8% higher for patients with a RASS score of –2 (PPV = 0.81). Furthermore, a SAS score of 4 and a RASS score of –1 were 14.0 and 10.7 times, respectively, more likely to predict those who met the investigator’s definition of light sedation. Overall, the SAS (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve [AUC] = 0.92) was slightly more accurate than the RASS (AUC = 0.89) in identifying patients under light sedation. The authors propose that further work be done to replicate these findings, as such work can inform the modification of clinical practice guidelines to promote adequate patient sedation and optimize clinical outcomes.Theresa May, DO, a lead author for this article, attributes her interest in this research to the rich legacy of her institution: “Our center has a long interest in ICU sedation and wakefulness … [including] interdisciplinary researchers, broad patient cohorts, many different medications, and different monitoring tools.” Despite this legacy, and the foundational work of other investigators, Dr May believes that there are “many more unanswered questions regarding the definition of light sedation and the implications of varying thresholds to consider a patient ‘awake’.” This distinction is significant, as sedation influences a patient’s ability to self-report pain, participate in delirium testing, and provide truly autonomous and informed consent.Being a pilot study, this work was intentionally smaller in scale; however, Dr May emphasizes the importance of teamwork. When building the team for this study, she sought to collaborate with clinicians from other disciplines, like nurses and pharmacists. However, she admits: “Finding those who were interested and willing to commit the time to be adequately trained, and then be available to help with the patient assessments took more work and time than we expected.”To this point, Dr May provides several examples of expected and unexpected challenges her team encountered throughout the study process that highlight the significance of teamwork. First, “there were several revisions of the case report form to gather baseline information and structured assessments.” Next, there was difficulty coordinating the sedation assessments with routine clinical care, which required “increased communication effort[s] between the bedside nurse and the study team.” Finally, when analyzing the data, Dr May acknowledges, “there were several ways to look at the data, and the research team spent quite a bit of time” deciding which analytic approach “would best answer the question we were asking.”Dr May leans upon her knowledge of the relevant literature and her clinical experiences when describing the implication of her team’s work for critical care practice. “The accepted definition of light sedation by the developers of the RASS and SAS … had not been compared to the definition used in [prior] sedation interruption studies … [nor by] the sedation guideline task forces.” She adds, Given the gaps in evidence and inconsistencies in clinical practice, Dr May believes that this work is part of a foundation that will improve a provider’s ability to understand how variations in the use of sedatives and analgesics correspond to a patient’s clinical presentation. This increased understanding-will in turn improve providers’ “ability to make an accurate [delirium] diagnosis and [know] how to best treat these patients.”This feature briefly describes the personal journey and background story of the EBR article’s lead investigators, discussing the circumstances that led them to undertake the line of inquiry represented in the research article featured in this issue.Teresa L. May, DO, has been a board-certified critical care, internal medicine, and pulmonary disease physician for almost 10 years. She first began interacting with patients as an undergraduate student volunteer at a local hospice and sexual assault center. These experiences motivated her to obtain certification as an emergency medical technician, and she developed a passion for taking care of critically ill patients and their families. Therefore, she explains, “pulmonary/critical care and neurocritical care fellowships were a natural choice following internal medicine residency.” As she became more engrossed in her research, she realized, “I would be more effective with a deeper understanding of statistical methods and study design, which resulted in a master of science degree in clinical and translational science.” Through each step of her journey, Dr May shares: “I was fortunate enough to have wonderful mentors, who are endlessly inquisitive and energetic about improving patient care. They have both laid out a roadmap for me to follow and have also let me pursue my own interests. For this, I am forever grateful.”