Tag: Opioid Safety

3 Key Patient Safety Initiatives for 2019

At the recent 4th Annual AARC Respiratory Patient Advocacy Summit, Michael Wong, JD (Founder and Executive Director, Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety) discussed 3 key patient safety initiatives for PPAHS for 2019.

Key #patientsafety initiatives for 2019 discussed at @aarc_tweets Respiratory‏Patient Advocacy Summit Click To Tweet

Also speaking with Mr. Wong on the panel discussion were:

Tim Myers (Chief Business Officer, AARC) moderated the session.

The 3 key patient safety initiatives for 2019 emphasized by Mr. Wong are:

Continue reading “3 Key Patient Safety Initiatives for 2019” →

Opioid Safety in America

In this article, Cal Cook (Consumer Finance Investigator, ConsumerSafety.Org) discusses resources for opioid safety, including checking lawsuits involving prescription medication.

By Cal Cook (Consumer Finance Investigator, ConsumerSafety.Org) investigates and writes about consumer-focused topics including finance, scams and safety. His passion lies in exposing fraud across all industries to protect consumers.

If you’re an American reading this, you’ve probably heard over the course of the last year or two how the opioid epidemic is getting out of hand. Nearly 70,000 people overdosed in 2017, making this epidemic even more deadly than breast cancer for the year.

Not all of those deaths were directly attributable to prescription medication, but many of the victims started with pills their doctor prescribed and went on to heroin and Fentanyl once they were addicted, because the more dangerous street drugs are cheaper.

Continue reading “Opioid Safety in America” →

Today’s Must-Have: Capnography Monitoring During Conscious Sedation

Today, the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health Safety released a clinical education podcast with Matt Kurrek, MD, FRCPC (Professor, Department of Anesthesia, University of Toronto) and Richard Merchant, MD, FRCPC (Clinical Professor, University of British Columbia, Department of Anesthesia, Pharmacology & Therapeutics).

Drs. Kurrek and Merchant coauthored an editorial, “Yesterday’s Luxury, Today’s Necessity” after the Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society [CSA] published its revised 2012 guidelines to the practice of anesthesia. The CSA guidelines recommend capnography monitoring during conscious sedation. In the podcast, Drs. Kurrek and Merchant discuss why capnography monitoring may have been considered yesterday’s luxury, but is now a necessity during conscious sedation.

Continue reading “Today’s Must-Have: Capnography Monitoring During Conscious Sedation” →

Patient Safety Weekly Must Reads (May 20, 2017)

This week in #patientsafety, PPAHS offered a look at the differences in anesthesiology standards between hospital and outpatient settings. From around the web, an infographic on blood clots, a look at how medical students are trained on the opioid crisis, and an alert in a small Canadian town experiencing the worst of the opioid epidemic. Continue reading “Patient Safety Weekly Must Reads (May 20, 2017)” →

Patient Safety Weekly Must Reads (February 11, 2017)

This week in #patientsafety, we look at the CDC’s updated guidelines on opioids. From around the web, the CDC’s Opioid Guidelines are now available as a mobile app; a man experiences opioid-induced respiratory depression and dies after routine gallbladder surgery; and a study tries to test whether patient involvement actually improves patient safety.

From PPAHS:

Opioid Safety Starts with Informed, Mutual Decisions. Giving patients a decision-making role in their pain plan–and providing them with the information they need to arrive at informed mutual decisions–is a recurring theme in the CDC’s updated guidelines on opioids.

From Around the Web:

New CDC Opioid Guideline Mobile App Now Available. The CDC has released its free Opioid Guideline app, designed to help providers apply the recommendations of the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain into clinical practice.

Man dies after routine gallbladder surgery. Gary Bougie was two months shy of his 36th birthday when he died. His family suspects he died from opioid-induced respiratory depression after going to the hospital for gallbladder surgery.

Achieving Real-Time Respiratory Depression Surveillance of Post-Surgical Patients. A focus on challenges of alarm management in caring for patients at risk for respiratory depression–includes strategies for better monitoring, referencing PPAHS’ national survey on PCA.

Top 10 Articles of 2016

Happy Holidays!

We’d like to wish you a safe and healthy 2017.

As we prepare for 2017, we reflect back on the top 10 articles from 2016.

Opioid Safety

  1. Physicians on Surgeon General’s Letter on Opioid Epidemic: Survey Results. The Surgeon General issued an Open Letter on the Opioid Epidemic. We looked into how clinicians and other patient safety experts felt about it.
  2. The U.S. Opioid Epidemic In Numbers. Related, Advance for Nurses generated an infographic summarizing your responses.
  3. 12 Years of Event-Free Opioid Use. In 2016, St. Joseph’s/Candler Health System celebrated 12 years free from Serious Adverse Events related to Opioid-Induced Respiratory Depression since the implementation of its continuous monitoring program.

Alarm Safety

  1. 3 Ways to Make Opioids Safer. Peggy Lange, RT, Director of the Respiratory Care Department at St. Cloud Hospital, discussed the importance of setting alarm thresholds for each patient in this podcast.
  2. Drawn Curtains, Muted Alarms, And Diverted Attention Lead To Tragedy In The Postanesthesia Care Unit. Sadly, alarms on the monitoring equipment used to alert healthcare professionals to changes in the patient’s cardiac and respiratory status were muted in one tragic death of a 17-year-old.
  3. A New Tool to Predict Respiratory Failure: An Interview with Hiroshi Morimatsu, MD, Ph.D. Could this multi-parameter indicator help counter alarm fatigue?

Bloot Clots Safety

  1. New PPAHS Campaign Targeting Orthopedic Venous Thromboembolism. VTE is the third-most prevalent reason for readmission after surgery, and about 1 million hip and knee replacement surgeries happen each year in the U.S.
  2. Physician-Patient Alliance Partners with World Thrombosis Day. As part of our new campaign, we partnered with World Thrombosis Day in 2016. Looking forward to working together in 2017.
  3. Why Bundled Payments for Joint Replacement May Be Risky for Patients. We took a look at whether patients are receiving evidence-based or reimbursement-based care under the Bundled Payments model.

Special Mention

  1. Why All Medical Schools Must Incorporate Quality Improvement and Patient Safety into Their Curriculums. This position by Molly Siegel generated plenty of engagement on the Twittersphere and is a theme that cuts across all of our priority areas.

Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) Needs Your Help: How Effective is Capnography Monitoring?

Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) has called for feedback on its report, “Capnography for Monitoring End-Tidal CO2 in Hospital and Pre-hospital Settings: A Health Technology Assessment”.

CADTH was created in 1989 by “Canada’s federal, provincial, and territorial governments, CADTH was born from the idea that Canada needs a coordinated approach to assessing health technologies.” As the tagline on CADTH’s website proclaims – “When Canada’s health care decision-makers need to know, they ask CADTH. We’re a trusted source for evidence on drugs and medical devices.” Continue reading “Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) Needs Your Help: How Effective is Capnography Monitoring?” →