Qual Saf Health Care
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Effective handoff practices (ie, mechanisms for transferring information, responsibility and authority) are critical to ensure continuity of care and patient safety. ⋯ This study provides insights into the multidimensional concept of handoff quality. Our rating tool is feasible and comprehensive by including not only characteristics of the information process but also aspects of teamwork and, thus, provides an important tool for future research on patient handoff.
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Qual Saf Health Care · Dec 2010
ReviewCoping with medical error: a systematic review of papers to assess the effects of involvement in medical errors on healthcare professionals' psychological well-being.
Previous research has established health professionals as secondary victims of medical error, with the identification of a range of emotional and psychological repercussions that may occur as a result of involvement in error.2 3 Due to the vast range of emotional and psychological outcomes, research to date has been inconsistent in the variables measured and tools used. Therefore, differing conclusions have been drawn as to the nature of the impact of error on professionals and the subsequent repercussions for their team, patients and healthcare institution. A systematic review was conducted. ⋯ It is evident that involvement in a medical error can elicit a significant psychological response from the health professional involved. However, a lack of literature around coping and support, coupled with inconsistencies and weaknesses in methodology, may need be addressed in future work.
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Cardiac surgery (PCS) has a low error tolerance, is dependent upon sophisticated organisational structures and demands high levels of cognitive and technical performance. The aim of the study was to assess the role of intraoperative non-routine events (NREs) and team performance on paediatric cardiac surgery outcomes. The current paper focuses on improving methods for studying teamwork; a companion paper will report on the empirical results. ⋯ PCS is an ideal model to explore team performance. A challenge for the future is to make observations of teamwork in healthcare settings more efficient and robust.
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Qual Saf Health Care · Dec 2010
Clinical handover in the trauma setting: a qualitative study of paramedics and trauma team members.
Clinical handover between paramedics and the trauma team is undertaken in a time-pressured environment. Paramedics are often required to handover complex problems to a multitude of staff. There is evidence that information loss occurs at this transition. The aims of this project were to (1) develop a minimum dataset to assist paramedics provide handover; (2) identify attributes of effective and ineffective handover; (3) determine the feasibility of advanced data transmission; and (4) identify how to best display data in trauma bays. ⋯ There is support for the adoption and further evaluation of a handover template. It can provide valuable structure to the face-to-face handover, and experience from other specialties suggests it can reduce information loss. Strategies to enable information to be transmitted in advance of the patients' arrival must address concerns voiced by paramedics.
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Qual Saf Health Care · Dec 2010
The nature and usefulness of patient experience information in producing guidance about interventional procedures.
To evaluate the nature of patient experience input and its perceived usefulness to members of a national Advisory Committee in making decisions about the efficacy and safety of new interventional procedures. ⋯ Obtaining patient experience to inform guidance development is complex but provides generally useful supporting evidence and some new insights not available from other evidence. Further research should aim to further develop and validate different methods to obtain patient experience input. The impact of patient experience information on how the Committee decides about whether a procedure is efficacious and/or safe should be made explicit.