Patient Safety on the Fly
Patient Safety on the Fly Technology and Teamwork
Picture this: You are a nurse on an emergency transport helicopter en route to pick up a critical patient who is intubated at an outlying facility. Upon arrival, you learn the patient has adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), complicated by septic shock.
First, Protect the Patient from Harm
First, Protect the Patient from Harm
Applying Adult Learning Principles to Patient Safety
“First, do no harm.” Today, unlike in the time of Hippocrates, evidence of harm may not become immediately obvious during healthcare interventions. For example, a lapse in attention while inserting a central line may result in a blood stream infection that becomes apparent days later.
ED Decompression
ED Decompression
Combating Emergency Department Overcrowding with Creative and Flexible Planning
To set the scene, imagine that it is a cold and rainy Friday evening in early January, and you are a nurse in the emergency department (ED) of the local hospital. Patients, with various complaints and levels of acuity, are being cared for in the ED’s 30 treatment rooms.
Editor’s Notebook
Editor’s Notebook
No Easy Answers
Earlier this summer, I co-presented a webinar for the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) that focused on different sources of information currently available about patient safety, as well as opportunities for prospective authors.
Consumers as Partners
Consumers as Partners
Empowering Patients and Families to Call for Rapid Response
Engaging patients and families as integral members of the healthcare team is an essential step in delivering high-quality, safe patient care. One approach for empowering patients and families being implemented in hospitals nationwide is to invite them to activate rapid response teams (RRTs) if patients show signs of physical deterioration or something doesn’t appear “quite right” with the patient.
Pulse: RMF Strategies Develops First-of-Its-Kind Surgical Malpractice Benchmarking Report
Pulse
RMF Strategies Develops First-of-Its-Kind Surgical Malpractice Benchmarking Report
Report provides healthcare organizations with actionable data and insights for enhanced patient safety.
RMF Strategies, leading an innovative national effort to use malpractice data to help healthcare organizations reduce medical errors and enhance patient safety, announced it has developed a first-of-its-kind surgical benchmarking report, “Annual Benchmarking Report: Malpractice Risks in Surgery.”
Pulse: NPSF Honors National Leaders with Awards at Patient Safety Congress
Pulse
NPSF Honors National Leaders with Awards at Patient Safety Congress
The National Patient Safety Foundation honored individuals and organizations with awards during the organization’s annual Patient Safety Congress in Orlando, May 18–19.
Medication Safety: Using Automated Heparin Protocols and CPOE to Reduce Errors
Medication Safety
Using Automated Heparin Protocols and CPOE to Reduce Errors
When the Joint Commission adopted a National Patient Safety Goal requiring hospitals to reduce the likelihood of patient harm from the use of anticoagulants, St. Clair Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, swiftly mobilized and seized the opportunity to improve patient care. In fall 2007, the 329-bed hospital collected and analyzed data on anticoagulant medication occurrences over the preceding 2 years.
Electronic Health Records
Electronic Health Records
EHR Implementation:
A Vendor’s Diary
This is the first in an occasional series chronicling the implementation of an electronic health record in a small community hospital system in rural New Hampshire. Serious discussion about the implementation began in 2009, during a time of seismic change in healthcare and healthcare IT.
Human Factors 101
Human Factors 101
Affordances and Constraints Improve Reliability
In the first article in this series, we introduced concepts of human factors engineering (HFE) and their application to healthcare. We discussed how healthcare traditionally relies on the “weak aspects of cognition” (short term memory, attention to details, vigilance, multitasking etc.) and how that contributes to many of the errors experienced in healthcare.