Daily Check-In for Safety: From Best Practice to Common Practice
Daily Check-In for Safety: From Best Practice to Common Practice
In the nuclear power industry, knowing the status of plant operations and early identification of potential problems is safety critical. At nuclear generating stations across the country, like the Black Fox plant (a pseudonym), each day begins with a plan-of-the-day meeting of plant leaders.
Automated Pre-op Instructions in a Culture of Continuous Improvement
Automated Pre-op Instructions in a Culture of Continuous Improvement
The benefits of providing patients with pre-operative instructions tailored specifically to their unique procedures, health status, and medications are well established. Patient safety perhaps tops this list. Healthcare providers have long recognized that offering clear, easily understandable instructions that cover requirements including fasting, discontinuing anticoagulants or blood pressure regulators, avoiding tobacco and alcohol, and more can enhance patient safety by reducing the chances of potentially life-threatening perioperative complications (Tea, 2010).
The Silent Treatment: Why Safety Tools and Checklists Aren’t Enough
The Silent Treatment: Why Safety Tools and Checklists Aren’t Enough
Poor communication is deadly, especially in critical care settings (Wachter, 2010; The Joint Commission, 2010). When communication breaks down in intensive care units (ICU) and operating rooms, the result is catastrophic harm (Alvarez, 2006; Gandhi, 2005) and even death (Consumers Union, 2009; Institute of Medicine, 2000).
Patient Safety Summit in Emergency Care
Patient Safety Summit in Emergency Care
Emergency care and patient safety thought-leaders from across North America convened in Las Vegas in May 2011 to spend two days together to address the patient safety challenges and opportunities throughout the continuum of emergency care. The event was hosted by the Emergency Medicine Patient Safety Foundation (EMPSF), a national not-for-profit organization based in California whose mission is to improve patient safety in the practice of emergency medicine through education, research, collaboration, and training.
Where Are the ‘Dots’?
Remote Monitoring Showcase
Where Are the ‘Dots’?
A network is comprised of nodes, sometimes called dots, that have to be connected for the system to provide benefits.
When you design a network, you want to connect the nodes or devices—“connect the dots”—to be sure that the units that have to “talk” to one another do so efficiently. If a node drops out, due to loss of power for example, there should be a way to route the data around the blacked-out dot and maintain the network’s throughput. If a node moves out of range, you want to know where it went and why.
Wander-Risk Patients: Best Practices for Hospitals and Assisted-Living Facilities
Wander-Risk Patients: Best Practices for Hospitals and Assisted-Living Facilities
Older adults and senior citizens with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia are at elevated risk of wandering away from their medical care facility, which poses unique challenges for the hospitals and specialized care facilities that house these patients. Wandering puts them in harm’s way; they could fall, get into an accident, become a crime victim, or suffer from exposure to the elements.
ABQAURP News
Trends
Trends
When Nurses Hurt Nurses
Seventy-three percent of adult women found workplace bullying to be “common” or “very common.” The same women reported that weekly, they are, on average, a bully 1.5 times, a victim of bullying 1.8 times and a bystander to bullying nearly 7 times.
RFID SHOWCASE: Fewer Events, Better Reporting
RFID SHOWCASE
Fewer Events, Better Reporting
Patient safety event-reporting systems are found in all hospitals and are a mainstay of efforts to detect potentially critical events and quality problems. Initial reports usually come from the personnel directly involved in an event or the actions leading up to it, such as the nurse or physician caring for a patient when an error occurred, rather than management or patient safety professionals.