Journal of patient safety
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Journal of patient safety · Mar 2010
Check a Box. Save a Life: How student leadership is shaking up health care and driving a revolution in patient safety.
The objective was to engage health professions students as leaders in spreading the World Health Organization Surgical Checklist. The published impact of the checklist in reducing surgical complications and deaths, combined with its ease of use, offers an ideal target for students to save lives and prevent suffering. As members of the "Check a Box. Save a Life." campaign, students can speed the pace of patient safety improvement. ⋯ As an independent, self-organized, decentralized effort and an application of student social organizing to the cause of patient safety, "Check a Box." is a landmark achievement. Leveraging social media and disrupting the traditional model of safety leadership, the campaign offers hope for the future of patient safety.
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Journal of patient safety · Mar 2010
The impact of integrative medicine on pain management in a tertiary care hospital.
Optimal inpatient pain management remains a major institutional and therapeutic challenge. Nontoxic, nonpharmacological approaches to treating pain show promise but have not been widely implemented, nor has their effectiveness been evaluated. ⋯ The formal provision of inpatient integrative medicine had a significant impact on pain scores for hospitalized patients, reducing self-reported pain by more than 50%, without placing patients at increased risk of adverse effects. This was true in all 6 settings. Age, previous use of complementary therapies, and sex did not affect results. Future research must define the appropriate dose of the intervention, the duration of the relief, and the identification of patients most likely to respond to these nonpharmacological treatments. Additionally, future research using the electronic health record will allow quantification of any reduction in total costs, pain medication usage, and adverse events.