Pediatric quality & safety最新文献

Introduction: Inflammatory markers (IMs) are often ordered in multiples, even though evidence suggests that this does not add any clinical benefit. The project aimed to reduce the number of duplicate IMs for patients by 10% in 12 months.

Methods: We implemented a quality improvement (QI) project at our hospital, focusing on patients admitted to the pediatric hospital medicine service. The team chose the model for improvement as the QI methodology. Key interventions included ongoing provider education, integrating the project into the physician incentive plan, and reviewing disease-specific pathways. The primary outcome measure was "duplicate IM use," which was defined as any two or more IMs (procalcitonin, C-reactive protein, or erythrocyte sedimentation rate) obtained on the same patient within 24 hours. The secondary outcome measure was any IM use during their stay, and the balancing measures were average complete blood count use, hospital length of stay, and 7-day readmission rate.

Results: The baseline duplicate IM use, and any IM use was 43% and 19%, respectively. After the start of this QI project, duplicate IM use decreased to 12%, and the use of any IM also decreased to 12%. Complete blood count use varied from 11% to 24% during the project without obvious correlation to IM use. Hospital length of stay decreased from 2.5 to 2.6 days, and the 7-day readmission rate remained at 2.8%.

Conclusions: The duplicate IM use and IM use were decreased without a concurrent increase in the balancing measures, indicating that a safe reduction of IM testing is feasible in inpatient pediatric care.

Background: Fast-track models decrease patient crowding in emergency departments (EDs) by redirecting low-acuity patients to an expedited care pathway. In 2016, this institution's pediatric ED created a fast-track pathway for patients evaluated in a rapid assessment triage area who needed further management in the primary ED. This "Supertrack" designation was intended for patients requiring up to 1 hour of additional care, though means of ensuring these patients were discharged within their anticipated timeframe were lacking.

Methods: We aimed to increase the percentage of Supertrack patients discharged within 1 hour of their ED bed assignment from 17% to 50%. Interventions included the creation of objective Supertrack criteria, departmental-wide progress reports, personalized reminders, intake huddles, and documentation prompts. We visualized data from Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycles with statistical process control charts to determine special cause variation.

Results: The percentage of Supertrack patients discharged within their anticipated timeframe increased from 17% to 27% without an increase in return ED visits. The average time Supertrack patients spent in the ED decreased from 121 to 103 minutes. Personalized reminders demonstrated a significant but short-lived improvement.

Conclusions: We improved the flow of Supertrack patients by decreasing their length of stay and increasing how many were discharged within their anticipated timeframe. Limitations included an unexpected surge in patients with respiratory complaints and staffing and structural constraints preventing the designation of a discrete Supertrack assessment space with dedicated providers. These findings are helpful for institutions seeking to develop an effective fast-track model with limited space and resources.

Introduction: Living with a chronic condition often impacts the emotional health of children. Pediatricians frequently feel unprepared to address these concerns. The American Board of Pediatrics Roadmap Project aims to support these clinicians. We describe the results from the initial cohort of pediatricians who completed the American Board of Pediatrics Maintenance of Certification (MOC) Roadmap Part 4 activity.

Methods: The Roadmap MOC activity uses a standardized improvement template with accompanying resources to guide participants. Physicians self-assess their ability to provide emotional health support by completing a Roadmap Readiness Checklist and creating a personal project relevant to their practice. They collect data at three time points: baseline, midpoint, and completion for two measures (the Readiness Checklist and a participant-selected measure). Physicians also reflect on their experience.

Results: Of the initial cohort of 29 physicians, 22 submitted three sequential checklist assessments. Scores increased for "developing a family resource list" (by 90%), "confidence to address emotional health" (79%), "having a family crisis plan" (78%), and "staff awareness" (34%). Twenty-four physicians who measured whether clinical encounters addressed emotional health documented an increase from 21% to 77%. Physician feedback was positive, for example, "This project has had a profound impact on our care of children."

Conclusions: This initial cohort of participants improved on the Readiness Checklist and emotional health assessment. Both generalist and subspecialty pediatricians found the activity useful and relevant, suggesting that this MOC Part 4 activity is a feasible resource for supporting physicians in addressing emotional health.

Background: Team communication remains a challenge in hospital settings. Hospital-based teams are diverse, team composition changes daily, and team members are frequently not co-located. Novice nurses and medical residents entering the workforce during the coronavirus 2019 pandemic experienced higher communication challenges than before and lacked adequate opportunities for interprofessional learning and communication.

Method: We evaluated perceptions of safety and communication among novice nurses and medical residents after a 1-hour focused team engagement consisting of an interprofessional virtual simulation and debrief. We conducted a retrospective pre/post survey to measure perceptions of interprofessional collaboration using the Interprofessional Socialization and Valuing Scale.

Results: Sixty-eight pediatric nurse residents and medical residents participated in the survey. Overall, the focused team engagements significantly improve participants' perceptions of interprofessional collaboration, with participants showing statistically significant improvement in seven of nine retrospective pre/post survey questions. When analyzing by discipline, nurse residents show stronger gains than medical residents.

Conclusions: The interprofessional structured debriefings encourage nurses and medical residents to collaborate and discuss important safety topics away from bedside stressors. After completing the virtual simulation, the outcomes show improved perceptions of interprofessional collaboration and enhanced knowledge of safety techniques.

Introduction: We aimed to investigate facilitators and barriers that impact the sustainability of an interprofessional situation awareness bundle.

Methods: This is a single-center qualitative study at a tertiary care pediatric center examining the sustainability of an interprofessional situation awareness bundle to reduce in-hospital cardiac arrests. The bundle includes an automated clinical decision support tool, twice-daily safety huddles, and a bedside mitigation plan. A trained research staff member interviewed participants in October 2022. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim, and recruitment continued until data saturation. Inductive and deductive analyses were used here.

Results: The authors interviewed twelve staff members via individual semistructured interviews: registered nurses (RN, n = 2) and clinicians [(advanced practice providers, n = 2), pediatric critical care fellows, n = 4 and attendings, n = 4)]. Five main themes were identified: (1) the situation awareness bundle is ingrained into daily practice and culture, (2) the bundle has strengthened communication, decision-making, and improved outcomes, (3) standardized processes, stakeholder buy-in, and support of team members are key to adoption and sustainability, (4) variation in processes and fast-changing clinical context remains a challenge for reliable use, and (5) the situation awareness bundle excluded families.

Conclusions: The situation awareness bundle has become ingrained, strengthened, and sustained over the last 5 years through integration into daily practice and culture and leveraging standardized processes, tools and technology. It is associated with improved communication and shared decision-making. Understanding the key components for implementation and sustainability is necessary for ongoing spread and improvement in the future.

Background: Falls in hospitalized pediatric patients represent a serious patient safety concern. Children and adolescents with cancer and blood disorders have inherent risk factors that increase the likelihood of injury from falls. The Hematology/Oncology (HO) and Stem Cell Transplant (SCT) inpatient units at Boston Children's Hospital embarked on a multiyear quality improvement journey to reduce inpatient falls in this population.

Methods: A targeted Falls Reduction Task Force implemented key initiatives between 2020 and 2023. These include enhancing communication strategies to heighten awareness of the highest fall-risk patients, conducting a formal apparent cause analysis on every fall with injury, and initiating a physical therapy-led program to reduce deconditioning. Outcome measures were total falls, rate of preventable falls with injury per 1000 patient days, and days between preventable falls with injury. Our quality improvement team used statistical process control charts to track changes over time.

Results: The combined rate of preventable falls with injury per 1000 patient days decreased from 0.63 in fiscal year (FY) 2020 to 0.25 in 2023. The SCT and HO units achieved a maximum of 442 days and 410 days, respectively, between preventable falls with injury in 2021-2023, compared with 124 and 117 days in 2020. The two units observed a 51% reduction in total falls over 4 years.

Conclusions: A multifaceted fall reduction quality initiative effectively reduced preventable falls with injury on pediatric HO and SCT inpatient units, thereby reducing avoidable harm in a vulnerable patient population.

Introduction: Osteopenia of prematurity is common in the neonatal intensive care unit, with an incidence of up to 54% in extremely low birthweight infants. The baseline fracture rate in our level IV midwestern neonatal intensive care unit was 13%, with poor compliance with recommended intakes of calcium, calcium:phosphorus ratio, and Vitamin D.

Methods: A multidisciplinary team implemented a screening guideline through four Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles, which addressed staff education, vitamin D screening, and incorporation of calcitriol. In total, 150 patients born between October 1, 2019 and April 30, 2023 were screened for mineral intakes, laboratory abnormalities, and the development of fractures or osteopenia.

Results: The incidence of fractures decreased from 13% to 5.3%. Compliance with mineral intakes improved for calcium, calcium: phosphorus ratio, and Vitamin D. Infants born after the guideline were 4.8 times less likely to develop fractures.

Conclusion: Quality improvement methodology successfully decreased the rate of fractures due to osteopenia of prematurity and increased compliance with recommended mineral intakes.

Introduction: Most providers have routinely performed universal lumbar puncture (LP) on well-appearing, febrile infants 22 to 28 days old. In 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended clinicians should perform an LP in this age group if inflammatory markers are abnormal. This quality improvement project aimed to decrease LP rates in febrile infants 22 to 28 days old in the emergency department (ED) within 1 year, regardless of race/ethnicity, from a baseline of 87%.

Methods: We used our institution's quality improvement framework to perform multiple Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles. A multidisciplinary team reviewed the febrile infant literature, local epidemiology, and identified key drivers. We provided departmental education, updated our clinical pathway, and used clinical decision support. We analyzed baseline (January 2017-March 2022) and intervention data (April 2022-March 2024) and tracked data using statistical process control charts. Our primary outcome measure was rates of LP in the ED for this cohort. Process measures included rates of infants with procalcitonin results. ED length of stay, rates of first LP attempt after hospitalization, and missed bacterial meningitis were balancing measures.

Results: The baseline LP rate of 87% decreased to 44% during the intervention period, resulting in a downward centerline shift. There were no significant differences when LP rates were analyzed by race/ethnicity. There was an upward centerline shift in the process measure of infants with procalcitonin results. There was no observed special cause variation in our balancing measures.

Conclusion: Quality improvement efforts, including education, clinical pathway updates, and clinical decision support, safely reduced rates of LPs in febrile infants 22 to 28 days old.

Background: Frontline healthcare safety leaders require expertise and confidence to manage local safety programs effectively yet are confronted with substantial challenges in identifying risk and reducing harm.

Methods: We convened a multidisciplinary safety learning collaborative in a children's hospital pediatric department and used the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's Breakthrough Series model. Participants attended four virtual education sessions over 13 months (September 2020-September 2021) focused on identifying harm and using tools to improve safety. We analyzed departmental safety data monthly throughout the collaborative. The primary outcome was the development of improvement projects using direct application of the session content. The secondary outcome was participant confidence in improving safety via pre- and postsurveys.

Results: Seventy clinicians and quality consultants participated. Fifteen divisional safety improvement projects were initiated. The percentage of survey respondents who reported feeling "completely confident" in their ability to improve safety increased from 26% (n = 39) to 58% (n = 26) from September 2020 to September 2021 (P = 0.01) and maintained at 65% 1 year after the end of the collaborative. We observed a decrease in the mean rate of reported inpatient preventable and possibly preventable moderate/serious/catastrophic events per 1000 bedded days from 1.10 (baseline) to 0.71 (intervention period).

Conclusions: Through a collaborative effort in a virtual learning environment, we facilitated the development of fifteen safety projects, increased leaders' confidence in improving safety, and saw improved inpatient safety. This approach, which involves healthcare professionals from various disciplines, may be effectively adapted to other settings.

Introduction: Disparities exist in access to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related health information. We aimed to close a gap in online traffic between English and Spanish COVID-19-related health information on our institution's publicly-facing website by 50% within ten months.

Methods: We used A3 improvement methodology. Outcome measures were the mean monthly difference between English and Spanish COVID-19 online traffic vis-a-vis (1) total webpage views and (2) unique webpage visits. Process measures were stratification of outcome measures by language. Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles included: Recurring advertisements on a local Spanish television station disseminating up-to-date COVID-19 information, including our institution's Spanish COVID-19 online resources, incorporation of QR codes into clinic discharge paperwork linking to institutional Spanish COVID-19 resources, and leveraging social media to expand reach. Control charts assessed impact over time.

Results: There were 1,226,196 total webpage views (369,983 Spanish; 856,213 English) and 1,065,536 unique webpage visits (350,518 Spanish; 715,018 English). Both outcome measures displayed sustained, special cause improvement from a mean monthly difference of 25,397 to 11,321 webpage views (55.4% reduction, June 2021) and 25,066 to 7080 unique webpage visits (71.8% reduction, February 2021) corresponding to special cause improvements in process measures. Improvements were not temporally associated with an intervention but coincided with emergency use approval of the COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 12-15 years (May 2021).

Conclusions: Although our interventions did not directly show improvements in our measures, we noted increased page views of Spanish COVID-19-related health information on our institution's publicly-facing website in times of high demand for linguistically appropriate services, including pediatric vaccine roll-out.