by Michael Wong, JD (Executive Director, Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety)
Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) is a highly respected comprehensive healthcare facility in the Mid-South region of the United States. Leaders like VUMC lead the way for safer patient care and improved health outcomes.
So, when Brian Rothman, MD (Associate Professor, Division of Multispecialty Adult Anesthesiology and Medical Director of Perioperative Informatics) recently spoke at the inaugural meeting of the National Coalition to Promote Continuous Monitoring of Patients on Opioids about VUMC’s experience with continuous monitoring of low-acuity patients, I took the opportunity to interview him about this experience and what advice he would give to other healthcare facilities looking to similarly improve patient safety and outcomes.
Dr. Rothman told me that “Currently, monitoring of patients on the general care floor is continual (at regular intervals), not continuous. This means that a nurse assesses a particular patient on an intermittent basis. To me, checking on a patient every 4 or 6 hours is like checking to see if the fridge light is on.”
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