Promoting patient safety and improving the quality of patient care
Tag: sepsis
Researchers have found that patients who were severely ill or who had died from COVID-19 had one of three factors;
Even before COVID-19, sepsis was considered a global health crisis:
Continue reading “Surviving Sepsis During the COVID Pandemic”
Sepsis is not only a medical emergency but also a global health crisis, affecting up to 30 million people a year:
The Global Sepsis Alliance has commended the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety (PPAHS) for its invaluable contribution to reducing the unacceptable human suffering from sepsis. The Global Sepsis Awards, which are sponsored by the Erin Kay Flatley Memorial Foundation, honor outstanding efforts to increase sepsis awareness and raise the quality of sepsis prevention and management.
Editor’s Note: This editorial from the desk of PPAHS’s Executive Director encourages sepsis protocols to be revising to prevent complications of care.
By Michael Wong, JD (Founder and Executive Director, Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety)
Patients go into hospital expecting to get “fixed” – to have whatever ails them to be treated. This is what we go to doctors for. In fact, this is what we go to any expert for – we go to lawyers to handle our legal problems, accountants to handle our accounting problems, doctors to handle our health problems.
Therefore, to go into hospital and contract another ailment – one unrelated to what we went in for – is concerning. For the patient, it means having to deal with this second ailment, including the related extra time, expense, and pain and suffering that that entails. For the physician, it means that something has been done or not done that has resulted in the patient getting ailment number two.
Continue reading “Sepsis Protocols Need Improving to Prevent Complications of Care”
Editor’s Note: This editorial from the desk of PPAHS’s Executive Director asks whether the debate over the 1-hour sepsis bundle should focus on improving care and not on making sure certain procedures are done within a 60-minute timeframe.
By Michael Wong, JD (Founder and Executive Director, Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety)
The recent kerfuffle over the 1-Hour Sepsis Bundle has missed the point about the need for better patient care and a much needed effort to save patient lives.
In 2002, the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, the Society of Critical Care Medicine, and the International Sepsis Forum came together and formed the Surviving Sepsis Campaign aiming to reduce sepsis-related mortality by 25% within 5 years. The goals of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign were to improve the management of sepsis through a 7-point agenda including:
Editor’s note – In this article for the DoctorWeighsIn, Michael Wong, JD (Founder and Executive Director, Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety) recounts his meeting with Dr. Ken Rothfield that led to the making of the video, “5 Keys to Reducing Sepsis.”
By Michael Wong, JD (Founder and Executive Director, Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety)
According to the CDC, each year in the U.S., more than 1.5 million Americans will develop sepsis and at least 250,000 Americans will die from sepsis. Although these numbers may be staggering, they may not hit home until sepsis strikes a loved one, a friend, or even yourself.
For me, it struck when Dr. Ken Rothfield and I met at a healthcare conference. Dr. Rothfield is Chief Medical Officer at Medical City Dallas, which is operated by the Hospital Corporation of America. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety (PPAHS), a non-profit advocacy group that I founded more than seven years ago, and has been a strong advocate for and partner in patient safety. He told me at the conference, “I almost died from sepsis.”
Continue reading “You May Not Get a Second Chance to Save a Patient’s Life”
Editor’s Note: In this video interview, Dr. Ken Rothfield urges his fellow clinicians to monitor patients for sepsis. Says Dr. Rothfeld, “patient monitoring can alert you at the earliest possible moment when sepsis is developing.”
Clinical studies have found mortality is significantly reduced if septic patients are identified at early stages of the disease process. Anand Kumar, MD (Critical Care Medicine, Health Sciences Centre/St. Boniface Hospital, University of Manitoba) and his colleagues in “Duration of hypotension before initiation of effective antimicrobial therapy is the critical determinant of survival in human septic shock” found in their research that early detection and treatment of sepsis is akey to reduced morbidity and mortality:
Continue reading “Early Detection of Sepsis Through Monitoring Saves Patient Lives”
Editor’s note: In this week’s must reads, we look at 3 new clinical guidelines and consider their impact on patient care.
Guideline for the Management of Patients With Atrial Fibrillation
The newly released “Guideline for the Management of Patients With Atrial Fibrillation” is a game changer for the use of anticoagulants. In a report by the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Clinical Practice Guidelines and the Heart Rhythm Society, in Collaboration With the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, newer anticoagulants, known as non-vitamin K oral anticoagulants (NOACs), are recommended over the traditional warfarin to prevent stroke in people with atrial fibrillation (AFib).
Continue reading “3 New Clinical Guidelines To Take Note of”
By Jeffrey S. Vender, MD
Clinicians and even the general public are aware of the dangers of sepsis, the life-threatening illness caused by a body’s response to an infection. Irrespective of one’s perception of pharmaceutical marketing materials or the evidence-based medicine used, awareness about sepsis has led to earlier diagnosis and interventions that have likely saved countless patients’ lives.
Moreover, hospitalists have played a key role in sepsis prevention.
Please click here to read the article by Dr. Vender.
Dr. Jeffery Vender is the emeritus Harris Family Foundation chairman of the department of anesthesiology at NorthShore University Health System in Evanston, Ill. He is clinical professor at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and chairman, Clinical Advisory Committee, Respiratory Compromise Institute. Dr. Vender has consulted with Medtronic
The Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety is pleased to partner with the Global Sepsis Alliance to increase awareness of the need for early detection and treatment of sepsis. Below is a press release by the Global Sepsis Alliance urging that sepsis be a global priority.
The Global Sepsis Alliance says not nearly enough is being done to curb sepsis, one of the most prevalent but misdiagnosed, deadly diseases, and designated a global priority by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2017.
In spite of the unanimous resolution in May 2017 by the Executive Board of the WHO and the World Health Assembly to improve, prevent, diagnose, and manage sepsis through a series of actions directed at developed and developing countries around the world, the majority of countries still have not implemented comprehensive educational programs on sepsis prevention, recognition, and care.