Promoting patient safety and improving the quality of patient care
Tag: Patient Safety
We’re saying goodbye to August with a roundup of PPAHS’ most popular posts and tweets of articles we’ve read.
Top Posts
This month’s published content is highlighted by its insightful guest and collaboration posts. For any who have read our content and want to contribute their opinions on matters of patient safety, reach out to us in the comments, on Twitter, or our Contact Page. Continue reading “Top 10 Patient Safety Must Reads – August 2016”
By Molly Siegel (Medical Student, Boston University School of Medicine)
Before starting medical school, I imagined medicine was what I saw on television: I would save lives by poring through textbooks to diagnose an obscure parasite, or by dissecting a rare tumor away from the carotid artery. But quickly I learned that healthcare is more than Dr. Meredith Grey or Gregory House’s heroic efforts. Yes, sometimes patients do have rare and bizarre conditions, and extraordinary levels of diagnostic and surgical skills are required for their care. But often in the hospital, patients are admitted for a diagnosable, manageable illness- and what endangers them is not their disease, but the systems issues they’re susceptible to while admitted for life-saving treatment. Continue reading “Why All Medical Schools Must Incorporate Quality Improvement and Patient Safety into Their Curriculums”
The Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety recently interviewed Peggy Lange, RT (Director of the Respiratory Care Department, St. Cloud Hospital) about a project that examined acute response team (ART) calls regarding patients who had received procedural or conscious sedation 24 hours prior to the event.
As Ms. Lange wrote in her article published in ADVANCE for Respiratory Care and Sleep Medicine, “Culture of Safety Includes Capnography”:
“We looked at patient monitoring practices in the outpatient procedural areas and we addressed the very real issue of too many alarms on the hospital patient floor. We also undertook a literature review for the project as we prepared to consider implementing capnography outside the operating room at our institution.”
For the project, St. Cloud Hospital brought together a team of clinicians that included physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, and pharmacists who represented different clinical areas like pain, sedation, endoscopy, and surgery.
In this interview, Ms. Lange discussed 5 key learnings from this project: Continue reading “5 Key Learnings to Create a Culture of Patient Safety with Capnography: An Interview With Peggy Lange, RT”
By Stephanie Uses, PharmD, MJ, JD (Patient Safety Analyst, ECRI Institute), Lynn Razzano, RN, MSN, ONCC (Clinical Nurse Consultant, Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety), and Michael Wong, JD (Executive Director, Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety)
Inadequate monitoring for respiratory depression in patients receiving opioids poses the greatest risk and potentially resulting harm to patients. ECRI Institute recently released the 2016 Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns for Healthcare Organizations and assigned inadequate monitoring its highest risk map of 80: Continue reading “5 Steps for Preventing Opioid Harm to Patients”
In a recent article, Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, FCCM (Professor, Departments of Anesthesiology/Critical Care Medicine and Surgery, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Medical Director, Center for Innovation in Quality Patient; Member of the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety PCA Safety Panel and OB VTE Recommendations Working Group) asks a great question, “Patient Safety at 15: How Much Have We Grown?”.
Dr. Pronovost reflects on the past 15 years:
Continue reading “How much safer are we? – Weekly Must Reads in Patient Safety (Jan 29, 2016)”
In her end of year wrap up for 2015, Tejal K. Gandhi, MD, MPH, CPPS, president and chief executive officer of the National Patient Safety Foundation and of the NPSF Lucian Leape Institute, pointed to 5 notable developments in patient safety:
Continue reading “What are you doing to accelerate patient safety?”
This week’s must-reads feature articles about multiple patient safety touchpoints, from an inspiring article about Catherine Zalewski, a 33-year-old mother of two, former Mrs. New Jersey and certified personal trainer, and two-time stroke survivor who is raising awareness for World Stroke Day, to a new report that pharmacist intervention can help reduce readmissions through postdischarge outreach phone calls.
The theme of this week’s must-reads is that patient safety can and is being improved at multiple touchpoints.
The two themes for this week’s must reads are risk assessment tools and medical errors.
Risk Assessment Tools
Nicole Humbert, PharmD, Trinity Hospital (Livonia, Michigan) and her colleagues analyzed 13,838 patients who received an opioid within 24 hours of surgery. Through their research, they have developed a risk assessment tool to identify those patients most at risk of opioid-induced respiratory depression: Continue reading “Weekly Must Reads in Patient Safety and Health Care (September 25, 2015) – Risk Assessment Tools & Medical Errors”
Dr. Melissa Langhan (Emergency Medicine, Yale School of Medicine) discusses case studies to improve patient safety through capnography.
Recent deaths – comedian Joan Rivers and 17-year-old Sydney Galleger – are a reminder of the need to ensure patient safety during common medical procedures.
“When medical tragedies occur, one of the very first questions asked by patients, families, the legal system, the press, and the public is: ‘were appropriate care standards met?’,” said Michael Wong, JD (Executive Director of the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety). Continue reading “Case Studies in Improving Patient Safety and Health Outcomes Through Capnography”
This week’s must reads in patient safety and health care focus on the need for supporting and maintaining a culture of safety. Two items may be overlooked as the emphasis is placed (where it should) on preventing adverse events and death to the patient:
Continue reading “Weekly Must Reads in Patient Safety and Health Care (August 7, 2015)”