BMJ quality & safety
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BMJ quality & safety · May 2013
Impact of multidisciplinary simulation-based training on patient safety in a paediatric emergency department.
Cincinnati Children's Hospital is one of the busiest paediatric emergency departments (ED) in the USA; high volume, high acuity and frequent interruptions contribute to an increased risk for error. ⋯ Simulation training is an effective tool to modify safety attitudes and teamwork behaviours in an ED. Sustaining cultural and behavioural changes requires repeated practice opportunities.
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BMJ quality & safety · May 2013
Interprofessional education in team communication: working together to improve patient safety.
Communication failures in healthcare teams are associated with medical errors and negative health outcomes. These findings have increased emphasis on training future health professionals to work effectively within teams. The Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS) communication training model, widely employed to train healthcare teams, has been less commonly used to train student interprofessional teams. The present study reports the effectiveness of a simulation-based interprofessional TeamSTEPPS training in impacting student attitudes, knowledge and skills around interprofessional communication. ⋯ Effective team communication is important in patient safety. We demonstrate positive attitudinal and knowledge effects in a large-scale interprofessional TeamSTEPPS-based training involving four student professions.
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Medical errors continue to occur despite multiple strategies devised for their prevention. Although many safety initiatives lead to improvement, they are often short lived and unsustainable. Our goal was to build a culture of patient safety within a structure that optimised teamwork and ongoing engagement of the healthcare team. ⋯ Pilot hospital results of HSOPSC show significant improvement from 2007 (pre-TeamSTEPPS) to 2010. System-wide results of HSOPSC show similar trends to those seen in the pilot hospital. Valuable lessons for organisational success from the pilot hospital enabled rapid spread of TeamSTEPPS across the rest of the health system.
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BMJ quality & safety · Apr 2013
Do you have to re-examine to reconsider your diagnosis? Checklists and cardiac exam.
Few studies have investigated whether clinicians can use checklists to verify their diagnostic decisions. Checklists may improve accuracy by prompting clinicians to reconsider or recollect information but might impair decision making by adding to clinicians' cognitive load. This study assessed whether checklists improve cardiac exam diagnostic accuracy, and whether this benefit is dependent on collecting additional information. ⋯ Verifying diagnostic decisions with a checklist improved diagnostic accuracy. This benefit was only seen when more information could be collected. Checklist use was not associated with increased cognitive load.