Articles: checklist.
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Critical care nurse · Feb 2015
Case ReportsUse of a nursing checklist to facilitate implementation of therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest.
Therapeutic hypothermia has become a widely accepted intervention that is improving neurological outcomes following return of spontaneous circulation after cardiac arrest. This intervention is highly complex but infrequently used, and prompt implementation of the many steps involved, especially achieving the target body temperature, can be difficult. A checklist was introduced to guide nurses in implementing the therapeutic hypothermia protocol during the different phases of the intervention (initiation, maintenance, rewarming, and normothermia) in an intensive care unit. ⋯ Observations of practice and feedback from nursing staff in all units confirm the utility of the checklist. Use of the checklist has helped reduce the time from admission to the unit to reaching the target temperature and the time from admission to continuous electroencephalographic monitoring in the cardiac intensive care unit. Evaluation of patients' outcomes as related to compliance with the protocol interventions is ongoing.
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Emerg. Med. Clin. North Am. · Feb 2015
ReviewChecklists for Hazardous Materials Emergency Preparedness.
Preparation for, and response to, hazardous materials emergencies requires both preplanning and just-in-time information management. The development of an emergency operations plan and a hazardous materials incident response plan involves many steps and implicates numerous resources: institutional, governmental, and private. ⋯ The availability of resources, human and informatics, as well as the means for accessing them, inevitably changes over time. The reader is advised to update all links and telephone numbers on a regularly scheduled basis.
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Minerva anestesiologica · Feb 2015
Observational StudyDoes the child behavior checklist predict levels of preoperative anxiety at anesthetic induction and postoperative emergence delirium? A prospective cohort study.
preoperative anxiety at induction and postoperative emergence delirium (ED) in children are associated with postoperative behavioral changes and adjustment disorders. This study's aim is to assess the value of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) score in order to predict anxiety during induction and emergence delirium after anesthesia in children undergoing elective day-care surgery. ⋯ The CBCL predicted anxiety at induction but not ED.
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Acta Anaesthesiol Scand · Feb 2015
The effects of surgical checklists on morbidity and mortality: a pre- and post-intervention study.
Surgical checklists (SCs) have been developed to enhance teamwork and facilitate handovers, thereby improving the safety of surgical patients in health care organisations. The aim of this study was to determine whether the implementation of a 39-item SC reduced mortality and surgical adverse events (AEs) in patients undergoing inpatient surgery. ⋯ The overall AE rate did not decrease significantly between the two periods. However, the rate of infectious AEs and overall AEs in patients with non-elective admissions had statistically significant reductions. Further research is needed to determine how and in which patients SC introduction can work successfully.