Joint Commission journal on quality and patient safety最新文献

Newborn resuscitation requires health care professionals to quickly assemble into a high-functioning integrated team. At the authors' academic children's hospital, there are billions of permutations of team composition that could attend a complex newborn delivery at any given time. ResusOne, a resuscitation safety and performance improvement program, uses recorded neonatal resuscitations to identify areas for improvement. The authors identified the following key areas that would support better team performance: (1) need for role clarity and task allocation among delivery team members and (2) communication challenges when calling for neonatal delivery teams. This article describes two tools that were developed to address the issues that were identified in these two areas.

Background: Assessment of patient safety culture (PSC) is critical for health care organizations worldwide to recognize areas that require urgent attention, promote patient safety, and improve quality of care. The aim of this systematic review was to determine the overall PSC score among nurses worldwide and identify the dimensions of PSC that score the highest and the lowest, as well as any geographical differentiations.

Methods: Literature research was conducted in PubMed and Scopus search engines and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Research Reference List to identify studies published in English between January 2004 and May 2023 that used the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture, version 1, to measure hospital nurses' assessment of PSC. This review followed the PRISMA 2020 guidelines and was registered in PROSPERO.

Results: From 1,507 records, 21 studies were included with 10,951 participants. The overall PSC score was 3.341 (95% confidence interval [CI] 3.221-3.460). The dimension scored highest was Teamwork Within Units, with a mean score of 3.719 (95% CI 3.594-3.844). Staffing, with a mean score of 3.096 (95% CI 2.980-3.212) was scored lowest. Statistically significant differences related to geographical distribution were found for overall PSC score and five of the PSC dimensions.

Conclusion: Nurses throughout the world rated the PSC at their organizations moderate to good. Certain dimensions of PSC were reported to need reinforcement to create a strong overall safety culture in health care. Participants rated European hospitals as having a stronger PSC than South American or Middle Eastern hospitals. Differentiations need to be further studied and analyzed for effective and targeted global interventions.

Background: Interfacility transfer is an integral component of the modern health care system. However, there are no commonly agreed-upon standards for interfacility processes or for patient engagement and shared decision-making in transfer, and little is known about their experience. This study used qualitative methods to better understand the patient and care partner experience with interfacility emergency department (ED)-to-ED transfer.

Methods: This mixed methods study used two distinct data sources: (1) semistructured interviews of older adult patients and their care partners, performed at bedside in a large, tertiary care hospital (receiving facility) following interfacility transfer, and (2) direct observation of the transfer consent process at two community EDs (referring facilities) in the same health system.

Results: A total of 21 patients and 14 care partners were interviewed. The authors identified several common themes related to perceptions and experiences with interfacility transfer: (1) communication (for example, perceived lack of agency), (2) logistics (for example, wait times), (3) impacts on family (for example, distance from home), (4) uncertainty about the bill (for example, transfer-associated costs), and (5) quality of care (for example, greater trust in tertiary care centers). Direct observations of the transfer consent process for 14 unique patient encounters were also conducted. The research team observed considerable variability in practice patterns among sending clinicians and identified frequent patient-reported issues related to transfer logistics and effective communication, including distractions, lack of privacy, absence of support system, physical pain and/or psychological stress, preferred language, and health literacy.

Conclusion: These data suggest several potential areas for improvement in the care of patients requiring interfacility transfer, to increase engagement and allow patients and their care partners to make better-informed decisions most consistent with their goals of care.

Background: In high-risk industries, the primary purpose of incident reporting is to obtain insights into contributing factors. Incident reporting systems in hospitals receive numerous reports from nurses but often lack detailed, actionable information. Enriching the information captured by incident reports would facilitate local efforts to improve patient safety.

Methods: The authors developed the Systems Approach For Event Reporting (SAFER) educational program to train nurses to (1) write detailed narratives and (2) describe contributing factors. To achieve these objectives, the research team incorporated the Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation (SBAR) model and the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) model. The authors conducted pilot tests with nurses, made iterative refinements, then deployed SAFER on eight nursing units at an academic medical center.

Results: An online learning module provides background information, a detailed curriculum leveraging SBAR and SEIPS models, interactive exercises, real-world examples of enhanced reports, and concluding information on how enhanced reporting benefits both nursing practice and patient safety. Nurses received a badge buddy-a laminated, double-sided reminder card to hang behind identification badges that reinforces key elements of SBAR and SEIPS models. In pilot testing, nurses reported that completing the module took 10 to 20 minutes, the material was clear and easy to understand, and they understood its purpose and objectives. The completion rate for implementation of SAFER online training was 88.7% (809/912 eligible nurses).

Conclusion: SAFER is an innovative program that introduces human factors principles to nurses and trains them to incorporate SBAR and SEIPS into incident reporting. SAFER is acceptable and feasible. Ongoing work includes testing the impact of SAFER on improving the utility of incident reports.

Background: The use of telehealth and remote exam devices for children with medical complexity (CMC) allows providers to engage with CMC in their home environment and alleviate caregiver burdens with in-person visits. The authors' objective was to increase the percentage of telehealth visits in which a remote exam device was used in a complex care center from 0% to 50% over a six-month period.

Methods: This improvement work targeted a pediatric complex care center. The multidisciplinary quality improvement team developed key drivers to design Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles. Key drivers included access to device, timely identification of patients with devices, ease of connection, strong provider coaching, and caregivers and providers who were knowledgeable and motivated in using the device. Interventions focused on increasing distribution of devices, streamlining the scheduling process, establishing a device registry, education for caregivers and providers on using the device successfully, translating materials into common languages, and providing remote Internet connections. The primary outcome measure was the percentage of telehealth visits completed using the remote exam device. The researchers also tracked the number of devices distributed. The active intervention period was June 2021 to December 2021, with continued data collection through April 2022.

Results: The median percentage of telehealth visits using the remote exam device increased from 0% to 43% over the intervention period with non-special cause variation in device utilization in the subsequent four months. The most impactful intervention focused on increasing device distribution.

Conclusion: Quality improvement methods were used to increase the utilization of an in-home remote exam device for CMC.