Articles: checklist.
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The opioid epidemic in the USA continues to worsen. Medical providers are faced with the challenge of addressing complications from opioid use disorders and associated injection drug use. Unsafe injection practices among people who inject drugs (PWID) can lead to several complications requiring acute care encounters in the emergency department and inpatient hospital. ⋯ We provide a clinical checklist of actions to help guide providers in the care of these complex patients. The clinical checklist includes strategies also applicable to low-resource settings, which may lack addiction treatment options. Our review and clinical checklist highlight key aspects of optimising the health and safety of PWID.
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J Clin Monit Comput · Jun 2016
Comment LetterPaper or plastic? Simulation based evaluation of two versions of a cognitive aid for managing pediatric peri-operative critical events by anesthesia trainees: evaluation of the society for pediatric anesthesia emergency checklist.
Cognitive aids (CA), including emergency manuals and checklists, are tools designed to assist users in prioritizing and performing complex tasks during time sensitive, high stress situations (Marshall in Anesth Analgesia 117(5):1162-1171, 2013; Marshall and Mehra in Anaesthesia 69(7):669-677, 2014). The society for pediatric anesthesia (SPA) has developed a series of emergency checklists tailored for use by pediatric perioperative teams that cover a wide range of intraoperative critical events (Shaffner et al. in Anesth Analgesia 117(4):960-979, 2013). In this study, we evaluated user preferences for a CA (SPA checklist) using two different presentation formats, paper and electronic, during management of simulated critical events. ⋯ In this study, anesthesia trainees had a favorable opinion of the content and perceived clinical relevance of both versions of the CA. In both quantitative and qualitative analysis, the paper version of the CA was preferred over the electronic version by participants. Despite overall favorable responses to the CA, a sizeable number of participants chose not to use either version the CA during the crisis.
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Int J Qual Health Care · Jun 2016
Observational StudyA PICU patient safety checklist: rate of utilization and impact on patient care.
In healthcare, checklists help to ensure patients receive evidence-based, safe care. Since 2007, we have used a bedside checklist in our PICU to facilitate daily discussion of care-related questions at each bedside. The primary objective of this study was to assess compliance with checklist use and to assess how often individual checklist elements affected patient management. A secondary objective was to determine whether patient and unit factors (severity of illness, unit census, weekday vs. weekend, admitting diagnosis group) influenced checklist use. ⋯ Our study found high rates of compliance with an established checklist that has been in use in the PICU since 2007. Checklist use frequently resulted in a change in the patient management plan.
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Journal of neurosurgery · Jun 2016
A checklist for endonasal transsphenoidal anterior skull base surgery.
OBJECT Approximately 250 million surgical procedures are performed annually worldwide, and data suggest that major complications occur in 3%-17% of them. Many of these complications can be classified as avoidable, and previous studies have demonstrated that preoperative checklists improve operating room teamwork and decrease complication rates. Although the authors' institution has instituted a general preoperative "time-out" designed to streamline communication, flatten vertical authority gradients, and decrease procedural errors, there is no specific checklist for transnasal transsphenoidal anterior skull base surgery, with or without endoscopy. ⋯ CONCLUSIONS Surgical complications are a considerable cause of death and disability worldwide. Checklists have been shown to be an effective tool for reducing preventable errors surrounding surgery and decreasing associated complications. Although general checklists are already in place in most institutions, a specific checklist for endonasal transsphenoidal anterior skull base surgery was developed to help safeguard patients, improve outcomes, and enhance teambuilding.
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Observational Study
World Health Organization (WHO) surgical safety checklist implementation and its impact on perioperative morbidity and mortality in an academic medical center in Chile.
Health care organizations are unsafe. Numerous centers have incorporated the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist in their processes with good results; however, only limited information is available about its effectiveness in Latin America. We aimed to evaluate the impact of the checklist implementation on the in-hospital morbidity and mortality rate in a tertiary health care center. ⋯ The median length of stay was 3 days [interquartile range (IQR), 1-5] and 2 days (IQR, 1-4) for the pre and postchecklist period, respectively (P < 0.01). This is the first Latin American study reporting a decrease in mortality after the implementation of the WHO Surgical Checklist in adult surgical patients. This is a strong and simple tool to make health care safer, especially in developing countries.