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Could mistakes made in your ED cause an injured elderly patient to go into fluid overload or become hypothermic? Common errors in nursing practice can be life-threatening for these patients, says Karen Hayes, PhD, ARNP, assistant professor at the School of Nursing at Wichita (KS) State University.
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When a physician asks for additional suture material for wound repair and the nurse realizes there is none left, the doctor explodes in anger.
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Failing to document the medications a patient currently is taking. Nurses mixing IV piggybacks. Storing drugs in concentrated form.
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ED managers and staff will face even greater responsibility for compliance under the 2006 National Patient Safety Goals just unveiled by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
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A patient came into the ED with acute onset of headache. A computed axial tomography (CAT) scan of the brain was performed, and a wet reading (an initial review of the study without definitive interpretation) in radiology reported intracranial hematoma. The patient went to the OR for emergency neurosurgery.
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In the world of bioterrorism drills, this was something special: TOPOFF3, a program mandated by Congress and sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, simulated terror attacks in several locations in the United States including the entire state of New Jersey.
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An ED manager as the driving force behind a capital campaign for a new facility? It has proved to be a winning formula at Carondelet Health Networks St. Marys Hospital in Tucson, AZ, where a successful $11 million-plus campaign has led to the opening of a new state-of-the-art ED.
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If you had reduced the mean door-to-doctor time in your ED from 64.3 minutes to 39.8 minutes (a 38.1% improvement) in seven months, youd probably be pretty happy. But for Maureen Kelly-Nichols, RN, MSA, the ED nurse director at Providence Hospital in Southfield, MI, that was not the key measure of success in her recent Six Sigma project.
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While the two new requirements involving hand-offs and medication labeling are the most obvious changes in the 2006 National Patient Safety Goals just released by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, there are other, more subtle changes that also are critically important for ED managers to know about.
