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 · Feb 2009
ReviewFeedback from incident reporting: information and action to improve patient safety.
Effective feedback from incident reporting systems in healthcare is essential if organisations are to learn from failures in the delivery of care. Despite the wide-scale development and implementation of incident reporting in healthcare, studies in the UK suggest that information concerning system vulnerabilities could be better applied to improve operational safety within organisations. In this article, the findings and implications of research to identify forms of effective feedback from incident reporting are discussed, to promote best practices in this area. ⋯ Limited research evidence exists concerning the issue of effective forms of safety feedback within healthcare. Much valuable operational knowledge resides in safety management communities within high-risk industries. Multiple means of feeding back recommended actions and safety information may be usefully employed to promote safety awareness, improve clinical processes and promote future reporting. Further work is needed to establish best practices for feedback systems in healthcare that effectively close the safety loop.
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Qual Saf Health Care · Dec 2010
Randomized Controlled TrialTeamwork training with nursing and medical students: does the method matter? Results of an interinstitutional, interdisciplinary collaboration.
The authors conducted a randomised controlled trial of four pedagogical methods commonly used to deliver teamwork training and measured the effects of each method on the acquisition of student teamwork knowledge, skills, and attitudes. ⋯ Each of the four modalities demonstrated significantly improved teamwork knowledge and attitudes, but no modality was demonstrated to be superior. Institutions should feel free to utilise educational modalities, which are best supported by their resources to deliver interdisciplinary teamwork training.
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Tachycardia during anaesthesia is a common event. In most cases the cause is easily identified and the problem promptly resolved. However, in some the cause may be rare or obscure. Under such circumstances, attempting to initiate appropriate supportive therapy and to consider a large differential diagnosis in a comprehensive manner may lead to delays which can put a patient at risk. ⋯ Tachycardia during anaesthesia is frequently associated with a simultaneous change in other monitored vital signs. The differential diagnosis is large. Addressing it in a comprehensive fashion requires a structured approach. A specific sub-algorithm treatment for tachycardia based on the associated blood pressure and on the prevailing heart rhythm in the case of hypotension offers a systematic guide which complements the benefits obtained by employing the core algorithm COVER ABCD.
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Qual Saf Health Care · Jun 2010
Patterns of nurse-physician communication and agreement on the plan of care.
Interdisciplinary communication is critically important to provide safe and effective care, yet it has been inadequately studied for hospitalised medical patients. Our objective was to characterise nurse-physician communication and their agreement on patients' plan of care. ⋯ Nurses and physicians did not reliably communicate with one another and were often not in agreement on the plan of care for hospitalised medical patients.