American journal of medical quality : the official journal of the American College of Medical Quality
-
This clinical review article examines the patient satisfaction literature for the past 20 years. This literature is summarized for qualitative themes and general trends. Intended for the practicing clinician, these themes are then applied to the emergency department (ED) milieu. ⋯ A review of the literature revealed 5 major elements of the ED experience that correlate with patient satisfaction: timeliness of care, empathy, technical competence, information dispensation, and pain management. The literature supporting these 5 elements is summarized and applications to the ED setting are suggested. Other minor correlates with patient satisfaction are also presented.
-
The Institute of Medicine has suggested that training in team behavior, leadership, communication, and other human factors could reduce medical errors and improve patient safety. Training on such topics has been adapted from teamwork training programs used in military and commercial aviation, called crew resource management (CRM). ⋯ The objectives of this study were to report on the body of empirical data about CRM training in clinical settings and to provide a conceptual framework for evaluating its effectiveness in medicine. Using the proposed conceptual framework, the authors further examine currently published methods of measuring effectiveness and identify future directions for the use of teamwork training in medicine.
-
Accounting for patients admitted to hospitals at the end of a terminal disease process is key to signaling care quality and identifying opportunities for improvement. This study evaluates the benefits and caveats of incorporating care-limiting orders, such as do not resuscitate (DNR) and palliative care (PC) information, in a general multivariate model of mortality risk, wherein the unit of observation is the patient hospital encounter. ⋯ One caveat is that DNR information, especially if associated with the later stages of hospital care, may mask opportunities to improve care for certain types of patients. But that is not a danger for PC, which is unequivocally valuable in accounting for patient risk, especially for certain subpopulations and disease groupings.
-
To improve safety in the operating theater, a company of aviation pilots was employed to guide implementation of preprocedural briefings. A 5-point Likert scale survey that assessed the attitudes of operating room personnel toward patient safety was distributed before and 6 months following implementation of the briefings. ⋯ For nurses, there were significant improvements in 3 questions (of 4) involving teamwork, 1 question (of 13) involving reporting error, and 3 questions (of 11) regarding patient safety climate. These results suggest that aviation-based crew resource management initiatives lead to an improved perception of patient safety, which was largely demonstrated by nursing personnel.