Promoting patient safety and improving the quality of patient care
Tag: J. Paul Curry
By J. Paul Curry, MD (anesthesiologist)
This is the concluding article in my series on respiratory dysfunction in post-surgical patients. Here are highlights from the preceding articles:
Continue reading “The Safest Way to Monitor Post-Surgical Patients”
This is the fourth article in a series exploring the impact of pulse oximetry alarm thresholds in hospitalized patients.
By J. Paul Curry, MD (anesthesiologist)
In the first article, “Improving the Safety of Post-Surgical Care,” I introduced the concept that, although the current approach to physiologic threshold monitoring (triggering an alarm when oxygen saturation falls below 90%) works well in the OR, it is unreliable on post-surgical floors. Continue reading “The Risk of Opioids in Post-Surgical Settings”
It is crucial to understand this type of respiratory dysfunction so that it can be detected and the patient is treated as early as possible in order to save lives.
By J. Paul Curry, MD (anesthesiologist)
This is the third article in a series exploring the impact of pulse oximetry alarm thresholds in hospitalized patients. In the first article, “Improving the Safety of Post-Surgical Care,” I introduced the concept that, although the current approach to physiologic threshold monitoring (triggering an alarm when oxygen saturation falls below 90%) works well in the OR, it is unreliable on post-surgical floors. Continue reading “Detecting Deadly Post-Surgical Respiratory Dysfunction”
Adjusting pulse oximetry alarm thresholds to avoid false alarms and universally monitoring all triggered alarms improves patient safety—so why don’t we do it?
By J. Paul Curry, MD (anesthesiologist)
This is the second article in a series exploring the impact of pulse oximetry alarm thresholds in hospitalized patients. In the first article, “Improving the Safety of Post-Surgical Care,” I introduced the concept that, although the current approach to physiologic threshold monitoring (triggering an alarm when oxygen saturation falls below 90%) works great in the OR, it is unreliable on post-surgical floors. Continue reading “Pulse Oximetry False Alarms on Post-Surgical Floors”
Although physiologic threshold monitoring works great in the OR, it is unreliable on post-surgical floors
By J. Paul Curry, MD (anesthesiologist)
Up to 750,000 cardiopulmonary arrests occur in hospitals every year in the United States. According to a review in Intensive Care Medicine, only 15 to 20 percent of these patients will survive.
Tragically, the survival rate following in-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation has changed little in the last 40 years, even though much has been done to improve respiratory monitoring and the deployment of competent resuscitation. One study of 139 in-hospital deaths showed that 62 percent could have been prevented if deterioration had been detected earlier, and nearly half (48 percent) of these patients had clear clinical signs of deterioration that went unnoticed. Continue reading “Improving the Safety of Post-Surgical Care”