Huddles Produce Many Safety Improvements
Ronette Wiley, RN, MHSA, CPPS, vice president of performance improvement at Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, NY, offers these examples of safety improvements resulting from the safety huddles implemented in 2015:
- After an outpatient fall, the hospital conducted an environmental assessment of all health centers that resulted in a number of proactive corrective actions in several locations. These actions included painting curbs; increasing handicapped parking spaces, and putting a call box in a parking lot so patients can request assistance going to and from their cars.
- Members of a safety huddle heard the story of a nurse who was unfamiliar with a new medication and did not recognize an adverse reaction it caused in her patient. The patient was not harmed, but the nursing education department developed a brief education module for all nurses about the new medication.
- In several huddles, concerns were raised about ED patients being transferred to inpatient units without receiving needed care such as antibiotics and blood products. As a result, the hospital added a prompt to the transfer portion of the electronic medical record that requires nursing staff to verify that medications and treatments have been given. Since the addition, there have been no reports of the problem.
Ronette Wiley, RN, MHSA, CPPS, vice president of performance improvement at Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, NY, offers these examples of safety improvements resulting from the safety huddles implemented in 2015:
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