With the launch of the VNNA Blueprint for Excellence, the Visiting Nurse Associations of America offers the home health industry, policymakers, payers, and others an invaluable tool to support better, safer and smoother care transitions.

Experts say the most risky time for patients in the ER is when physicians transfer care of patients from one doctor to another. Communication failures are the most common cause of problems inside our hospitals and often are the root cause of errors and adverse events. February’s 2013 BMJ Quality and Safety Journal found team training can transform a hospital’s culture of safety. Safer Sign Out is a patient-centered, team-based innovation that was developed by emergency physicians to improve the safety and reliability of end of shift patient “handoffs.”

By Karlene M. Kerfoot, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

Ineffective staffing programs are often the invisible factors that cause the best intentioned patient safety programs to collapse. Positive patient care outcomes are dependent upon a “point of excellence” where the clinician and the patient interact synergistically every time. Variability between clinicians because of nurse turnover blocks the chances of achieving excellence—which is particularly harmful when it involves the new nurse.

Pace University’s Lienhard School of Nursing in the College of Health Professions has been selected for the third time as a grant recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) New Careers in Nursing Scholarship Program (NCIN).

By Susan Carr

Jamie Kelly and Mark Neuenschwander have announced the discontinuation of the unSUMMIT for Bedside Barcoding. In a letter to interested colleagues, they explain that after eight years of holding annual conferences, they will now focus on providing “affordable, year-around online education with the same high-quality exchange of peer-to-peer experience for which our unSUMMIT meetings have been known.”

Atlantic General Hospital recently strengthened patient safety measures by expanding its use of capnography to monitor patients using patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) to regulate their pain after surgery.

By Susan Carr

The medical community has debated the value of sleep versus continuity of care since 2003, when the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education limited the number of consecutive hours medical residents may be on duty. (Organizations are required to comply with the duty hour standard to retain ACGME accreditation.) Research, however, has shown that making sure resident physicians get enough rest doesn’t insure safer care for patients, which was the main driver of the standard.

By Timothy Kelly, MS, MBA

The operating room is one place in a hospital where things are expected to run like clockwork – it is imperative that surgical procedures start on time.  When delays occur, the impact can be significant:  staff and equipment are underutilized, surgeons become frustrated, patients grow (more) anxious and optimum outcomes may be placed at risk, particularly if the prior administration of medications or antibiotics had been timed to the projected start of a procedure. It is thus alarming that a recent study in JAMA Surgery found that 10 percent of surgical procedures were delayed due to a missing piece of paper – the consent form.

Missouri Health Connection (MHC) has announced the grand opening of its health information network, paving the way for a new era of collaboration among healthcare providers to improve care quality, boost patient satisfaction, and reduce healthcare costs for all Missourians. The state’s physicians and patients now have one connection for a healthier Missouri, instead of having to navigate a complex maze of information sources to improve the health of patients.