Weighing the Pros and Cons of Patient Safety Technology
Although some emerging technology promises a patient safety cure-all, hospitals need to evaluate clinician workflow before implementing new gadgets In the 21st century, technology offers a solution to just about any everyday problem. Don’t know that actor that just came onto your screen? Log onto the IMDB app. Need directions? Just type the address into … Continued
Beyond Empowerment: Patients, Paradigms, and Social Movements
A conversation with “e-Patient Dave” deBronkart
By Susan Carr
Dave deBronkart, known on the Internet as e-Patient Dave, is one of the world’s best-known evangelists for the patient engagement movement. A 2007 survivor of stage IV kidney cancer, he discovered the movement in 2008 and started blogging about it as a hobby. In 2009, he moved his electronic hospital data to a personal health record, which triggered a series of events that landed him on the front page of The Boston Globe (Wangsness, 2009). Invitations to attend policy meetings in Washington and give speeches followed. An accomplished speaker in his professional life, he has now participated in 450 healthcare events in 15 countries. His 2011 TED Talk has been seen by almost a half million viewers online.
deBronkart is a child of the Sixties, which leads him to see the e-patient movement as a social revolution, parallel to civil rights and feminism. And as an MIT graduate, he also sees it as the natural evolution of a scientific field. The following is based on a conversation he had recently with Susan Carr, editor of Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare.
Immersion Program for Emerging Leaders in Patient Safety
The Academy for Emerging Leaders in Patient Safety (AELPS) (aka Telluride Patient Safety Summer Camp) now offers a three-day immersion program in patient safety and quality education for risk managers, healthcare administrators, and health education faculty. This comprehensive workshop will be held July 27–30 in Napa Valley, California. For 11 years, the AELPS faculty has … Continued
Simulation Techniques for Teaching Time-Outs: A Controlled Trial
Incorrect surgery and invasive procedures sometimes occur on the wrong patient, wrong side, or wrong site; are performed at the wrong level; use the wrong implant; or in some way represent a wrong procedure on the correct patient. Although rare, with a reported incidence of 1 in 112,994 cases, incorrect invasive procedures have potentially disastrous consequences for patients, staff, and healthcare organizations (Dillon, 2008). Patients suffer preventable harm, staff may be censured and emotionally traumatized, and healthcare organizations experience a loss of public reputation and trust.
Minnesota State Coalition Works to Prevent Violence Against Healthcare Workers
By Rachel Jokela, RRT, RCP; Diane Rydrych, MA; Tania Daniels, PT, MBA; and Rahul Koranne, MD, MBA, FACP.
Injury data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that doctors, nurses, and mental health workers are more likely than other workers to be assaulted on the job. Nationally in 2013, one in five healthcare and social assistance workers reported nonfatal occupational injuries, the highest number of such injuries reported for any industry (Gomaa et al., 2015). While similar data is not available by state, in Minnesota in 2013, 16.7 per 10,000 healthcare employees missed work due to injuries caused intentionally by others (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013), nearly six times the overall U.S. rate for all industries. Despite these numbers, many incidents that do not cause missed work may go unreported in healthcare. Healthcare providers may choose not to report incidents out of compassion for residents or patients, or they may mistakenly believe that tolerating threats or physical violence from those they care for is just “part of the job.”
Opioids: What Do Healthcare Professionals Want and Need to Know?
By Patricia McGaffigan, RN, MS; Caitlin Y. Lorincz, MS, MA; and Tejal K. Gandhi, MD, MPH, CPPS
The availability of, and access to effective and safe treatments for pain remain serious problems in the United States (Institute of Medicine, 2011). Opioid medications are important for addressing short-term and chronic pain management. Given the benefits that they provide, usage of opioids has become widespread over the past decade. However, opioid medications also carry substantial risk, and their increased usage has introduced a host of unintended consequences across the care continuum. Given this, opioids have significant implications for patient safety. The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) conducted a convenience flash poll survey to obtain a snapshot of opioid-related patient safety concerns, learning needs, and familiarity with existing seminal publications among healthcare professionals.
Fall Prevention: Stand Up to Falls
“Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up.” That inspirational quote is designed to focus on lessons that can be learned in order to move forward effectively and ultimately succeed.
When a fall is approached as an opportunity to learn, new knowledge is gained, informing changes that can lead to improvement. Learning is at the heart of improvement, innovation, and growth. But when a patient fall is treated as a failure, the learning stops.
ISMP: Key Medication Errors in the Surgical Environment
Medication errors in the perioperative area received widespread media attention with the publication of an article in the journal Anesthesiology (Nanji, Patel, Shaikh, Seger, and Bates, 2016). The perioperative area is one of the most medication-intensive locations in a hospital, often with more medications, particularly high-alert medications, administered per patient than other patient care units. Yet, this area of the hospital often operates with fewer medication safety strategies in place than most other patient care units. For example, the anesthesia provider often selects, prepares, labels, and administers medications without the benefit of electronic clinical decision support, pharmacy review of medication orders prior to administration, barcode scanning of products prior to administration, and other secondary checks by other healthcare providers (Nanji et al., 2016; Brown, 2014). This lack of normal checks and balances, along with the use of multiple medications, time-sensitive tasks, complex and stressful working conditions, distractions, and fatigue all contribute to making the perioperative area particularly error-prone when medications are administered.
‘Citizen Jury’ Recommends Ways to Improve Diagnosis
The Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine (SIDM), the Jefferson Center, and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University are working with healthcare consumers to develop a list of the ways patients can reduce diagnostic error. The project is using a process developed by the Jefferson Center’s founder, Ned Crosby, PhD, … Continued
Opioids: What Do Healthcare Professionals Want and Need to Know?
The availability of, and access to effective and safe treatments for pain remain serious problems in the United States (Institute of Medicine, 2011). Opioid medications are important for addressing short-term and chronic pain management. Given the benefits that they provide, usage of opioids has become widespread over the past decade. However, opioid medications also carry substantial risk, and their increased usage has introduced a host of unintended consequences across the care continuum. Given this, opioids have significant implications for patient safety. The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) conducted a convenience flash poll survey to obtain a snapshot of opioid-related patient safety concerns, learning needs, and familiarity with existing seminal publications among healthcare professionals.