News: New MR Safety Certification Focuses on Radiologists, Technologists, and Physicists
The American Board of Magnetic Resonance Safety (ABMRS) is built around the central principal that professionals trained in MR safety represent the single greatest opportunity to reduce accidents and injuries in the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) environment.
Editor’s Notebook: Transparency
Communities often develop verbal short cuts for concepts that bind them together. In patient safety, “transparency” serves as shorthand for a broad range of activities and programs, including disclosure of errors, patient- and family-friendly access to medical records…
Using Simulation to Coordinate Care for Cardiac Surgery
A six-month-old girl is undergoing repair of a hole in her heart, and while on cardiopulmonary bypass (the machine that pumps the blood through the body while the heart is stopped), there is massive bleeding from the heart…
Making It Easy for Nurses to Reduce the Risk of CLABSI
Increased compliance with the 2002 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Guidelines for Prevention of Intravascular Catheter-Related Infections (O’Grady, Alexander & Dellinger, et al. 2002) resulted in a significant decrease in early stage (less than 4 days) central-line associated bloodstream infections…
A New Approach to Fall Prevention in Inpatient Care
Like most hospitals, our organization—St. David’s North Austin Medical Center in Texas—is focused on preventing patient falls. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality estimates that 700,000 to 1 million patients fall in U.S. hospitals each year.
Alarm Management: First Things First
When Hedy Cohen, RN, BSN, MS, a critical care nurse and former vice president of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), was admitted to a major medical center with severe abdominal pain, she and her husband, Michael Cohen, RPh, MS, ScD (hon.), DPS (hon.), president of ISMP, were dismayed by the number of medical device alerts and alarms she had to endure…
Innovation: Bolus Injectors – Medication Adherence, Safety, and Convenience
There are approximately 900 biologic drugs in development today. But despite their promise for advancing treatment of cancer, immunologic disorders, rare and chronic diseases, the full benefit of biologic and immunologic therapies…
Using Simulation to Coordinate Care for Cardiac Surgery
A six-month-old girl is undergoing repair of a hole in her heart, and while on cardiopulmonary bypass (the machine that pumps the blood through the body while the heart is stopped), there is massive bleeding from the heart…
ISMP: The Dirty Dozen – Persistent safety gaffes we need to resolve!
As 2014 draws to a close, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices honors the many exceptional efforts that have been undertaken in the past year to improve medication safety. Despite the many safety accomplishments in 2014…
Viewpoint: Emerging Challenges for Patient Safety – Opportunities for Our Finest Hours
The birth of the patient safety movement can be linked intimately to Lucian Leape’s seminal article Error in Medicine (1994), published six years before the Institute of Medicine’s report To Err is Human (2000).