Qual Saf Health Care
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Qual Saf Health Care · Dec 2010
Assessing teamwork attitudes in healthcare: development of the TeamSTEPPS teamwork attitudes questionnaire.
The report, To Err is Human, indicated that a large number of deaths are caused by medical error. A central tenet of this report was that patient safety was not only a function of sophisticated healthcare technology and treatments, but also the degree to which healthcare professionals could perform effectively as teams. Research suggests that teamwork comprises four core skills: Leadership, Situation Monitoring, Mutual Support and Communication. In healthcare, team training programmes, such as TeamSTEPPS®, are designed to improve participant knowledge of, attitudes towards, and skills in these core areas. If such training programmes are effective, changes in knowledge, attitudes and skills should be observed. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate the TeamSTEPPS Teamwork Attitudes Questionnaire (T-TAQ), a measure designed to assess attitudes towards the core components of teamwork in healthcare. ⋯ The T-TAQ provides a useful, reliable and valid tool for assessing individual attitudes related to the role of teamwork in the delivery of healthcare. Issues related to its use and interpretation are discussed.
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Qual Saf Health Care · Dec 2010
Medication reconciliation in the emergency department: opportunities for workflow redesign.
To examine the role of workflow redesign to improve medication reconciliation at four Washington State community hospital emergency departments. ⋯ Ideas for an optimal workflow to generate a medication list include involving patients and utilising clerical staff to a greater extent in medication information gathering, identifying and flagging patients with missing medication information, and gathering only the medication information needed to make clinical decisions in the emergency department.
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Qual Saf Health Care · Dec 2010
Comparative StudyAdverse events and comparison of systematic and voluntary reporting from a paediatric intensive care unit.
Little is known of the incidence of adverse events in the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU). Perceived incidence may be dependent on data-collection methods. ⋯ Neither voluntary reporting nor systematic enquiry captures all adverse events. While the two methods both capture some events, systematic reporting captures serious events, while voluntary reporting captures mainly insignificant and minor events.
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Qual Saf Health Care · Aug 2010
Medical team training and coaching in the Veterans Health Administration; assessment and impact on the first 32 facilities in the programme.
Communication is problematic in healthcare. The Veterans Health Administration is implementing Medical Team Training. The authors describe results of the first 32 of 130 sites to undergo the programme. This report is unique; it provides aggregate results of a crew resource-management programme for numerous facilities. ⋯ Sites are implementing the programme with a positive impact on patients and staff, and improving teamwork, efficiency and safety. A unique feature of the programme is that implementation was facilitated through follow-up support. This may have contributed to the early success of the programme.
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Qual Saf Health Care · Feb 2006
Review Meta AnalysisInterventions in primary care to reduce medication related adverse events and hospital admissions: systematic review and meta-analysis.
To identify and evaluate studies of interventions in primary care aimed at reducing medication related adverse events that result in morbidity, hospital admission, and/or mortality. ⋯ There is relatively weak evidence to indicate that pharmacist-led medication reviews are effective in reducing hospital admissions. There is currently no evidence for the effectiveness of other interventions which aim at reducing admissions or preventable drug related morbidity. More randomised controlled trials of primary care based pharmacist-led interventions are needed to decide whether or not this intervention is effective in reducing hospital admissions.