Tag: stop bang

Patient Safety Awareness Week Needs to Be Every Week

By Sean Power

“Competent and thoughtful leaders contribute to improvements in safety and organizational culture.”

—The Joint Commission, Sentinel Event Alert 57

Earlier this month, The Joint Commission released Sentinel Event Alert 57, The essential role of leadership in developing a safety culture, calling on leaders to prioritize and increase the visibility of everyday actions that create a culture of safety.

There is no better time to amplify that message than Patient Safety Awareness Week, March 12-18, and we are calling on leaders to make every week patient safety awareness week at their healthcare facilities. Continue reading “Patient Safety Awareness Week Needs to Be Every Week” →

New Guideline on Pre-Op Screening and Assessment for OSA

This article was first published in Patient Safety Solutions on October 11, 2016.  As part of our efforts to bring in expert viewpoints from across the #patientsafety community, we have reposted this with permission.

By Bradley T. Traux, MD

Our regular readers are well aware of the numerous controversies and limited evidence base regarding perioperative issues in patients with known obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) or those suspected as being at high risk for OSA (see the list of prior columns at the end of today’s column).

The Society of Anesthesia and Sleep Medicine has just published “Guidelines on Preoperative Screening and Assessment of Adult Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea”. This is a most thorough evaluation of the evidence base regarding multiple issues related to OSA in patients about to undergo surgery. One is struck by the lack of strong evidence for almost all the recommendations in the guideline, though we are not surprised since we’ve previously discussed most of the controversial issues. Yet this consensus guideline uses common sense and is very practical and appropriately balances concerns for patient safety with utilization of resources and concerns over timing of surgery.

Below is their executive summary of the recommendations: Continue reading “New Guideline on Pre-Op Screening and Assessment for OSA” →