Joint Commission journal on quality and patient safety / Joint Commission Resources
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Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf · Aug 2011
Didactic and simulation nontechnical skills team training to improve perinatal patient outcomes in a community hospital.
Birth trauma is a low-frequency, high-severity event, making obstetrics a major challenge for patient safety. Yet, few strategies have been shown to eliminate preventable perinatal harm. Interdisciplinary team training was prospectively evaluated to assess the relative impact of two different learning modalities to improve nontechnical skills (NTS)--the cognitive and interpersonal skills, such as communication and teamwork, that supplement clinical and technical skills and are necessary to ensure safe patient care. ⋯ A comprehensive interdisciplinary team training program using in-situ simulation can improve perinatal safety in the hospital setting. This is the first evidence providing a clear association between simulation training and improved patient outcomes. Didactics alone were not effective in improving perinatal outcomes.
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Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf · Aug 2011
Evaluating efforts to optimize TeamSTEPPS implementation in surgical and pediatric intensive care units.
An evidence-based teamwork system, Team-STEPPS, was implemented in an academic medical center's pediatric and surgical ICUs. ⋯ The implementation of a customized 2.5-hour version of the TeamSTEPPS training program in two areas--the PICU and SICU--that had demonstrated successful ability to innovate suggests that the training was successful.
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Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf · Aug 2011
Investigating a pediatric hospital's response to an inpatient census surge during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic.
On November 4, 2009, the 250-bed Seattle Children's Hospital (SCH) identified a surge in its census--245 inpatients, well above the average midnight census of 207. In response, SCH activated its pandemic influenza surge plan in an effort to decrease the inpatient census. Within 16 hours, 51 patients (20.4% of total bed capacity) had been discharged, and inpatient census at SCH decreased to 222 patients. ⋯ Increasingly, evidence indicates that care quality depends on the degree to which hospital resources are sufficient to meet demand. Reverse triage, at least as implemented by SCH on November 4, 2009, is unlikely to represent an effective solution to surge outside of a disaster setting because of its requirement for centralized decision making. SCH has incorporated the results of this review into the way that it collects and analyzes data, manages flow, and responds to inpatient surges.
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Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf · Jul 2011
The meaningful use regulations in information technology: what do they mean for quality improvement in hospitals?
If provider organizations are serious about improving quality and efficiency, they must advance their electronic health record capabilities far beyond just meeting the U. S. federal regulations.
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Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf · Jun 2011
A survey of the use of time-out protocols in emergency medicine.
Time-outs, as one of the elements of the Joint Commission Universal Protocol for Preventing Wrong Site, Wrong Procedure, and Wrong Person Surgery has been in effect since July 1, 2004. Time-outs are required by The Joint Commission for all hospital procedures regardless of location, including emergency departments (EDs). Attitudes about ED time-outs were assessed for a sample of senior emergency physicians serving in leadership roles for a national professional society. ⋯ Although the time-out requirement has been in effect since 2004, more than 1 in 10 of ED physicians in this sample ofED physician leaders were unaware of it. According to the respondents, medical errors preventable by time-outs were rare; however, time-outs may be useful for certain procedures, particularly when there is a risk of wrong-site, wrong-patient, or wrong-procedure medical errors.