Anesthesiology clinics
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Multidisciplinary education (MDE) is perceived as the next means of implementing major improvements in the quality and cost-effectiveness of patient care. In this article, the authors discuss various definitions of MDE, evaluate how MDE might be implemented in clinical arenas relevant to the anesthesiologist, and describe several implementations of MDE within their hospital and the anesthesiology department.
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Anesthesiology clinics · Mar 2011
ReviewUsing real-time clinical decision support to improve performance on perioperative quality and process measures.
Anesthesia information management systems (AIMS) are becoming more commonplace in operating rooms across the world and have the potential to help clinicians measure and improve perioperative quality. However, to realize the full potential of AIMS, clinicians must first understand their capabilities and limitations. This article reviews the literature on AIMS, focusing on areas where AIMS have been shown to have a meaningful impact on quality, safety, and operational efficiency.
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This article summarizes the current state of technology as it pertains to quality in the operating room, ties the current state back to its evolutionary pathway to understand how the current capabilities and their limitations came to pass, and elucidates how the overlay of information technology (IT) as a wrapper around current monitoring and device technology provides a significant advance in the ability of anesthesiologists to use technology to improve quality along many axes. The authors posit that IT will enable all the information about patients, perioperative systems, system capacity, and readiness to follow a development trajectory of increasing usefulness.
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Simulation, a strategy for improving the quality and safety of patient care, is used for the training of technical and nontechnical skills and for training in teamwork and communication. This article reviews simulation-based research, with a focus on anesthesiology, at 3 different levels of outcome: (1) as measured in the simulation laboratory, (2) as measured in clinical performance, and (3) as measured in patient outcomes. It concludes with a discussion of some current uses of simulation, which include the identification of latent failures and the role of simulation in continuing professional practice assessment for anesthesiologists.
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Anesthesiology clinics · Mar 2011
An anesthesiology department leads culture change at a hospital system level to improve quality and patient safety.
At New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical Center, an innovative approach to involving housestaff in quality and patient safety, policy and procedure creation, and culture change was led by the Department of Anesthesiology of the Weill Medical College of Cornell University. A Housestaff Quality Council was started in 2008 that has partnered with hospital leadership and clinical departments to engage the housestaff in quality and patient safety initiatives, resulting in measurable improvements in several patient care projects and enhanced working relationships among various clinical constituencies. Ultimately this attempt to change culture has found great success in fostering a relationship between the housestaff and the hospital in ways that have and will continue to improve patient care.