Last week we released an interview with Peggy Lange, RT, Director of the Respiratory Care Department at St. Cloud Hospital, on her team’s use of capnography in procedural and conscious sedation. Since then, it’s proven to be the most popular interview in our podcast series to-date.
The subject of the interview with Ms. Lange is a particularly topical one. Both the institutional and public eye has been focused on opioids and the ‘opioid epidemic’. And along with this, the body of knowledge related to their safe use continues to grow. Readers and listeners interested in additional content about capnography and opioid safety will be happy to find other interviews and webinars from PPAHS and across the web.
Haven’t listened to the interview yet? Listen to the interview with accompanying slides on Youtube, or read the transcript here.
Avoiding Respiratory Depression During Conscious Sedation
PPAHS interviewed Richard Kenney, MSM, RRT, NPS, ACCS, RCP (Director, Respiratory Care Services, White Memorial Medical Center). In the interview, Mr. Kenney deep-dives into how the White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles experienced a “better than fifty percent reduction in calls of rapid responses”. We uncovered that a successful implementation of both capnography and pulse oximetry monitoring was a key driver in this.
Safe Opioid Use – Strategies for Reducing Adverse Events and Related Harm
This 2014 webinar by Premier Safety Institute focuses on continuous electronic monitoring of post-surgical patients receiving patient-controlled analgesia (PCA). It features:
- Bhavani S. Kodali, MD, associate professor, Department of Anesthesiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
- Harold Oglesby, RRT, manager, The Center for Pulmonary Health, Candler Hospital, Saint Joseph’s/Candler Health System
- Joan Speigel, MD, assistant professor, anesthesiology, Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
- Michael Wong, JD, executive director, Physican-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety
- Gina Pugliese, RN, MS, vice president, Premier Safety Institute®, Premier, Inc.
The discussion ranged from usage of capnography and pulse oximetry in continuous monitoring, to the importance on clinician training and patient education. For a summary of some of the key points raised during the discussion, read the article here. Watch the webinar archive here.
5 Steps for Preventing Opioid Harm to Patients
Co-authored along with Stephanie Uses, PharmD, MJ, JD, Patient Safety Analyst at ECRI Institute and Lynn Razzano, RN, MSN, ONCC, Clinical Nurse Consultant at Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety, this article published on The Doctor Weighs In builds upon the importance of continuous monitoring in opioid harm reduction. In addition to implementing the right monitors and alarms, the article also calls for the empowerment of nurses and other clinicians to pro-actively intervene through the use of established protocol. Read the full article here.