sábado, 21 de marzo de 2009

AHRQ: Discusión de casos clínicos de situaciones con compromiso de la seguridad del paciente en Urgencias

La AHRQ presenta casos clínicos sobre diversas situaciones donde existe compromiso de la seguridad del paciente, con discusión y estrategias de mejora.
A continuación un extracto de los casos presentados en marzo/08
Los problemas en la transmisión de información sobre el historial del paciente entre diferentes servicios o niveles asistenciales o en el mismo servicio de urgencias.... el riesgo de las interrupciones por una simple llamada... casos clínicos con discusión presentado en la página de la Agency for HealthCare Research and Quality (AHRQ) (http://www.webmm.ahrq.gov/case.aspx?caseID=194) :
"A fatigued emergency department (ED) physician was coming to the end of his long shift when he was told there was a patient referral from an area nursing home. When he picked up the phone, the nursing home physician on the line started to explain, "I'm sending you a 68-year-old man with a history of interstitial lung disease who has been having some shortness of breath." At that moment, the call was interrupted as a senior nurse grabbed the ED physician and said, "We need you in code room one now!" The paramedics had just arrived in the ED with a critically ill patient. .....................
........................The scenario faced by this emergency physician is all too common—because of lapses in communication, he was forced to make crucial medical decisions with little information. In this case, communication failures occurred between the nursing home and the ED as well as between emergency medical services (EMS) personnel and the ED. This case provides an opportunity to explore these critical transitions in care.
............... The 2008 Joint Commission Patient Safety Goal 2E requires all health care providers to "implement a standardized approach to handoff communications" (6) and states that the organization's process for effective handoff communication ought to include (7):
Interactive communication allowing opportunities for questions between the giver and receiver of patient information.
Up-to-date information regarding patient condition, care, treatment, medications, services, and recent or anticipated changes.
Methods to verify received information, including repeat-back or read-back techniques.
Opportunities for the receiver to review relevant patient historical data, which may include previous care, treatment, or services.
Limited interruptions to minimize the possibility that information fails to be conveyed or is forgotten

miércoles, 18 de marzo de 2009

Errors in administration of parenteral drugs in intensive care units: multinational prospective study

Errors in administration of parenteral drugs in intensive care units: multinational prospective study. BMJ 2009;338:b814
Andreas Valentin, Maurizia Capuzzo, Bertrand Guidet, Rui Moreno, Barbara Metnitz, Peter Bauer, Philipp Metnitz on behalf of the Research Group on Quality Improvement of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) and the Sentinel Events Evaluation (SEE) Study Investigators
Objective To assess on a multinational level the frequency, characteristics, contributing factors, and preventive measures of administration errors in parenteral medication in intensive care units.
Design Observational, prospective, 24 hour cross sectional study with self reporting by staff.
Setting 113 intensive care units in 27 countries.
Participants 1328 adults in intensive care.
Main outcome measures Number of errors; impact of errors; distribution of error characteristics; distribution of contributing and preventive factors.
Results 861 errors affecting 441 patients were reported: 74.5 (95% confidence interval 69.5 to 79.4) events per 100 patient days. Three quarters of the errors were classified as errors of omission. Twelve patients (0.9% of the study population) experienced permanent harm or died because of medication errors at the administration stage. In a multiple logistic regression with patients as the unit of analysis, odds ratios for the occurrence of at least one parenteral medication error were raised for number of organ failures (odds ratio per increase of one organ failure: 1.19, 95% confidence interval 1.05 to 1.34); use of any intravenous medication (yes v no: 2.73, 1.39 to 5.36); number of parenteral administrations (per increase of one parenteral administration: 1.06, 1.04 to 1.08); typical interventions in patients in intensive care (yes v no: 1.50, 1.14 to 1.96); larger intensive care unit (per increase of one bed: 1.01, 1.00 to 1.02); number of patients per nurse (per increase of one patient: 1.30, 1.03 to 1.64); and occupancy rate (per 10% increase: 1.03, 1.00 to 1.05). Odds ratios for the occurrence of parenteral medication errors were decreased for presence of basic monitoring (yes v no: 0.19, 0.07 to 0.49); an existing critical incident reporting system (yes v no: 0.69, 0.53 to 0.90); an established routine of checks at nurses’ shift change (yes v no: 0.68, 0.52 to 0.90); and an increased ratio of patient turnover to the size of the unit (per increase of one patient: 0.73, 0.57 to 0.93).
Conclusions Parenteral medication errors at the administration stage are common and a serious safety problem in intensive care units. With the increasing complexity of care in critically ill patients, organisational factors such as error reporting systems and routine checks can reduce the risk for such errors.
ARTICULO COMPLETO (Free Text):